


Chasing the Sun

by starlightwalking



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Grantaire, Curses, Don't Have To Know About Supernatural (TV), F/M, Flashbacks, Immortal Grantaire, Lots of Angst, M/M, Multi, Original Character(s), lots of death, so many original characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 00:24:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11324829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlightwalking/pseuds/starlightwalking
Summary: Grantaire's curse doesn't allow him to make a difference in his own life or in anyone else's, and it also doesn't allow him to die permanently, but after living for 347 years in misery, he's sick of it. He sets out to find the god that cursed him, but he is joined along the way by a teen with their own agenda, and both them and his curse will make it difficult for him to achieve his goal.Sequel to Buffintruda's story "Echoes of the Past".





	Chasing the Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Buffintruda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buffintruda/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Echoes of the Past](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4906534) by [Buffintruda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buffintruda/pseuds/Buffintruda). 



> I can't believe I'm writing Supernatural fanfiction a) at all and b) in 2017, but here we are. Ever since my best friend Buffintruda wrote their story "Echoes of the Past" I wanted a conclusion to Grantaire's story, so this year for their birthday I wrote it myself! Happy birthday, I love you!! <3  
> You don't /have/ to have read Echoes of the Past to understand what's going on here, but it would be very helpful, and also that fic is incredible, so I would recommend doing that.  
> Fair warning: I don't know much about Supernatural, and most of my research into that fandom was done so I could avoid writing about much that happens in that canon and make the rest of it up. This is mostly a Les Mis fic set in the Supernatural universe, and if I wrote something that wouldn't make sense in Supernatural (or messed up Loki's characterization, which is probable) I'm sorry! I just went where the story took me :)  
> Also, there are tons of OCs in this story, and even more flashbacks to Grantaire's past. It turned out wayyy longer than I anticipated, but I got to tell the story I wanted and I'm really pleased with how it turned out!  
> Thanks for reading and commenting!

**Remote French village. April 17, 1677.**

Robert hadn't intended for any of this to happen. It had all been an accident. He tried to tell himself that it wasn't his fault, but hadn't it been his idea for his parents to go out on the river the afternoon when the storm came and they both drowned? And hadn't he been the one who responsible for his sister Marie afterward?

Now he was all alone in the world, too young for protecting a thirteen-year-old at his own tender age of seventeen. Beside Marie, he was responsible for something else, hiding his family's deadly secret from the rest of the village, and now he had messed up again.

"May we come in?" asked the baker's wife, knocking upon their door. "I brought some bread. I am so sorry to hear of your loss, but I assure the village will care for its own."

"No!" Robert said from the other side of the door. "Thank you, but no—oh, could you leave the bread for us?"

"Let us come in, lad," said the gruff voice of the butcher. "We're here to help."

"No," he said again. Marie clutched his hand, giving him strength. If not for her, he might have let them in and let them discover their secrets, but he had to protect his sister.

"You have nothing to fear from us," said the baker's wife, but she was wrong.

At last, Robert could fend them off no longer. The butcher forced the door open, and three villagers came inside: the butcher, the baker's wife, and the quiet priest.

"My boy, you are so pale!" exclaimed the baker's wife. She touched his forehead. "You are cold! Are you sick, little Robert?"

The butcher deposited a slab of meat on the table, and the baker's wife placed her basket of bread beside it. The priest nodded to Robert and smiled to Marie.

"This place is not nearly as strange as I expected, I must say," the baker's wife commented. "Your poor parents, bless their Christian souls, were always so secretive I thought there must be something to hide! Unless the oddness is in the back room?"

"No, don't!" cried Marie. Robert flung himself in front of the door and begged, "Please, Madame!"

"Now, young man—" began the butcher sternly, but it was the priest who gently pushed Robert aside and opened the door.

That was when things went  _really_  wrong.

"We are done for," Robert whispered.

"The gods will protect our own," Marie promised him softly.

The butcher gasped. The baker's wife screamed. The priest clutched the cross hanging at his heart and nearly fainted.

Within the back room, where the Grantaire parents had never allowed any visitors to enter, were statues of the Roman gods, braziers and knives where sacrifices and rites took place, and ancient scripts in a tongue none of them could speak, let alone read.

The village, like the rest of France, was devoutly Christian. Robert, Marie, and their parents acted as if they were, too, but truly they followed the ancient Roman traditions. Robert's mother swore they were from the blood of emperors and gods, among the last believers of a dead but powerful religion. The glory days of Rome had long passed in the year 1677, but the Grantaire family carried the ancient traditions with them. Robert had once even heard his father proclaim he was a descendant of the great god Jupiter.

All of this was done in private, of course. Outwardly, the Grantaires were model Christians, but the Roman gods were their true allegiance. They had always lived in fear that the villagers would discover their pagan secret. If that happened, they would be killed or cast out for sure.

But now that terrible day had come. Alone, without parental protection, they had let their secret be discovered. That was Robert's fault, too.

"Robert..." said the priest in a trembling voice. "What is the meaning of this?"

But he had no explanation. As soon as their pagan artifacts were discovered and the story dragged out of a sobbing Marie, the villagers lost all sympathy for the Grantaire children. They were dragged screaming from their home and forced to watch the village burn it and all of their sacred objects. Marie sobbed desperately as her last link to her faith was severed, screaming out prayers to Jupiter.

Robert stood in the midst of all the chaos, silent and dazed. He could scarcely believe any of this was happening to him.

He had long held doubts within him about the truth of his parents beliefs, and was this not further proof they were wrong? Despite Marie's prayers and his family's lifelong worship, no gods descended from the sky to curse the villagers. If they were even real, they were uncaring: they had allowed his parents to die, they had allowed their secret to be discovered, they had allowed this awful punishment to befall them.

He and Marie were truly alone.

"What will we do with the pagans?" demanded the butcher.

"Hang them!" cried one villager.

Robert's hand instinctively went to his neck. His other hand gripped Marie's tightly. They both shivered in the wind as the cry went up: "Hang them! Hang them!"

"No!" protested the baker's wife. "The girl—she is only a child! She can be redeemed!"

"Let her be married," someone else suggested.

"Marry into a good Christian home, and she'll learn," said the baker in agreement with his wife. "My son Jean is looking for a wife, he will marry her, won't you?"

"She's thirteen!" Robert exclaimed. He drew Marie close to him. "She's far too young to be married!"

"But you are sixteen, and old enough to be hanged," snarled the butcher.

The crowd of angry villagers descended upon the Grantaire siblings, tearing them apart from each other. "Marie!" sobbed Robert, and though he couldn't hear her, she was crying his name, too.

Robert was shoved to the nearest tree, a noose wrapped around his neck. Despite his struggles, he could see death before him. The sun was setting, as was the his last hope of survival.

Perhaps the god of the sun would save him. Robert, despite his doubts, needed help right now. He choked out a last strangled prayer to the gods—to Apollo—that he might be saved, and Marie spared. She watched him in horror, already at the side of the baker's son.

"Stop!" cried a voice.

A young woman with blonde hair pushed her way through the crowd: Isabelle, the priest's niece. Robert had always fancied her from afar, but he had known that with his family's secret, they would never work out, despite her passing teases about his good looks. Marie had poked fun at him about his affection for her, once, but now seeing her, his heart filled with hope.

Isabelle shoved aside the people holding Robert and loosened the noose from his neck. Then she turned back to face the crowd, trembling. "Who is the heathen here? The pagans, or the ones who kill them? Are we not taught to forgive, and let God decide?"

The villagers looked down at their feet, ashamed. Robert looked at Isabelle and knew she was sent from a god, but not from the God she believed in. She was a gift from Apollo.

"Our parents tricked us," Robert rasped. "Please...let me live. Let Marie go free."

"Liar!" shouted the butcher, but the priest stepped forward to join his niece.

"Isabelle is right," he said softly. "Let God punish the heathen." He turned to Robert and removed the noose from his neck. Isabelle took Marie from the baker's son.

"Turn them out on the road," she said, lifting her head high. "There is no place for pagans in our village, but neither is there place for devilish wrath."

She didn't look at Robert once, but he loved her in that moment.

Marie and Robert Grantaire were banished from their village, but spared their lives and freedom. They trekked far from their home, with only a morsel of bread for sustenance. They camped on the road that first night, and Marie cried in her brother's arms. Robert held her, barely holding back tears himself.

"This is all my fault," he muttered.

"No, it's my fault," said Marie. "I prayed to Jupiter to protect us, and he did not."

"That's Jupiter's fault, then," Robert said bitterly. "If he is even real. The villagers were right—we are only a remnant of a dead time. Maybe there is only one God." But he could not deny Isabelle's answer to his own prayer. Perhaps Apollo, if not Jupiter, was watching out for them.

"We are Roman, Robert!" Marie cried. "Pray. I beg you. To whoever—but not the Christian God."

"Tomorrow we set out for Paris," Robert told her, not acknowledging her plea. "See what that brings."

"Pray, Robert," Marie insisted.

Robert told her he wouldn't, but in his heart he faltered. They were still alive, even if they were homeless. Apollo had listened to him...unless Isabelle, beautiful Isabelle, had only acted out of Christian charity. But he found that unlikely: if he had learned anything from this awful day, it was that charity didn't exist.

Still...what did he and Marie need now? Warmth, food, hope. And what brought all that? The sun.

So though he didn't want to, though he knew it was likely in vain, Robert swallowed his pride and prayed to Apollo, the only god he now believed could save them.

* * *

**Nowhere, Nebraska. January 12, 2009.**

The Robert Grantaire of 1677 was entirely different from the Robert Grantaire of January 2009. In the 331 years since he and Marie had fled from their village, Grantaire had regained and lost his faith in the gods, been cursed to live forever and fail to make a difference in his own life, died 76 times, moved from France to the United States of America, and lost more than he had even known he had. On the plus side, food was way better now—or at least, he had better access to great food.

As he dug into some pasta from the Italian restaurant around the corner from his two-star hotel in Nowhere, Nebraska, he ruminated on how everything had gone so wrong in his life. At sixteen, he had been convinced that getting kicked out of a remote French village was the worst thing that would ever happen to him. The mistake that killed his parents and pushed him out of town had been the worst thing he'd ever done. Now, at 347 and with more than that many horrible life choices, he laughed at how wrong his youthful self had been.

Apollo. That bastard. This was all his fault—well, it was at least one third his fault. Even before his curse, Grantaire had always had a knack for messing up.

A curse from a god was no laughing matter, of course. And neither was this incredible pasta. Grantaire munched away, grateful for the opportunity to live long enough to eat this.

Three months earlier, Grantaire had run into someone he'd been positive he'd never see again: Enjolras, the man he'd loved even more than a god, and also the man he had died with. Now, for Grantaire, dying was no big deal—he'd just wake up a few hours or days later almost totally healed. For Enjolras, the effects of eight bullets to the chest were more permanent, so seeing him was a bit of a shock.

Enjolras had been a ghost, and with a little bit of help from two hunters of the supernatural, Grantaire had dealt with the threat and at the same time reconciled with the man who still after all these years (176, to be exact) haunted Grantaire's thoughts and dreams. But these hunters—well, at least one of them—had helped Grantaire in another way. They had given him a purpose.

" _Maybe if whoever cursed you dies, your curse will break,"_  Sam Winchester had suggested. " _You should try to find him, right? So you can convince or threaten him to giving you back your mortality."_

At first, Grantaire had brushed the idea aside. There was no way something like that would work. But if he could talk to Enjolras again after all these years, maybe he could do something else impossible.

Grantaire was tired of dying. More accurately, he was tired of living. 347 years was too long for any mortal to be alive. Surely after all these years, Apollo would have forgiven him? Surely he would take pity on him and lift his curse, allowing him to die—permanently?

Grantaire swallowed the last bite of his pasta and got down to business. He pulled out his laptop and got back to scrolling local news websites all over the nation for any signs of Apollo, the god who had cursed him. There was no killing Apollo, but convincing him or threatening him just might work.

Unusually good weather, famous artists in town, and scandals coming to light could all be signs of Apollo, god of the sun, music, and truth, hanging around. Still, the last seven places Grantaire had visited had been god-less.

He was getting sick of this pointless quest. For all Grantaire knew, Apollo wasn't even around any longer. Maybe he'd dwindled in power, or had been killed by another god, or had gone and fucked himself out of existence. Grantaire wouldn't put it past him.

While aimlessly scrolling through news sites, he stopped on one for a tiny town in Ohio. For a moment he thought it was called "Marinara, Ohio" but he was disappointed: the town was actually called Marina. As of yesterday, they were enjoying a week of winter sunshine when snow had been expected. He scrolled a little further and grinned as he saw that the mayor had just been caught cheating on his wife. If Taylor Swift was in town, it would be even better.

No such luck. There were no singers in town, and the local art exhibit was closing down. The scandal and sunshine were probably just a coincidence. His heart sank. He wouldn't find anything helpful in Marina, just like there was no sign of Apollo in the town literally called Nowhere.

Grantaire swore under his breath and slammed the lid of his laptop down. "What's the point?" he mumbled. "The world's going to end soon, anyway." Or at least, Sam had said so.

He was tempted to call Sam and Dean up, if he could find their contact information, but they wouldn't help him. Even without their own troubles, a god-hunt was expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous. They were hunters, and they knew better than to get tangled up with deity.

Maybe he ought to go jump off a building. It would be a change in pace, and he'd baffle the local press when his body disappeared after he came back to life. He always got a kick out of confusing people who thought they could explain everything.

He was out of leads. He simply needed to accept it and give up his chase. He'd be cursed forever; besides, nothing he ever put his hopes into—what little he had—ever succeeded.  _That_  was part of his curse, too.

Gloomily, Grantaire turned on the hotel TV. There wasn't anything good on. He settled on watching the national news, half-hoping something helpful would show up.

"—police and experts baffled by the strange demise of Jefferson Boyd, a Missouri man who fell from a thirteen-story building he did not even work at," said a vaguely attractive newscaster. "The body was found by a janitor who claims—"

Grantaire sat up suddenly. Briefly, a face he recognized had flashed on the screen in the form of a janitor with a cheeky grin. Of course, when Grantaire had first met him and later been cursed, the janitor hadn't looked like that, and he himself hadn't looked as ugly and modern as he did now, but Grantaire had run across the janitor less than a year ago in this new form.

"Loki," he growled, pulling up his laptop again. It looked like he had a new lead.

* * *

**Paris, France. May 4, 1677.**

The city of Paris was such a hub of degradation and villainy that the Grantaire siblings felt they had little to fear. Heresy was still a serious crime, but it was less likely to be discovered when there were far more interesting and dangerous wrongdoings going on in the city. No one cared about two village nobodies who worshipped the wrong deities, as long as they kept that to themselves.

Shortly after their arrival, Robert found a job working on the many massive construction projects funded by the King. He earned barely enough for himself and Marie to subsist. Marie worked as a washerwoman in the local square, bringing in some extra coin.

The lived like this for four years. Then, when Marie was seventeen and Robert was twenty, Robert rose in the ranks of the construction workers and began to earn more.

In that same year of 1681, something else life-changing occurred. Robert met Antoine Tanquerel.

Antoine Tanquerel owned a tavern. Grantaire had never drunk in excess, but after meeting Antoine he became a regular drinker. Antoine was 23, a recent inheritor of his late father's business, and he was the most handsome man Robert had ever met.

Antoine was charming, friendly, and companionable. Robert was so enamoured of him that he couldn't keep himself away from Tanquerel's Tavern. He hadn't felt this fond of a person since Isabelle, whom he still thought of on his saddest days. Antoine liked him, too, and even began to buy him drinks and meet him in places other than the tavern.

When Antoine first met Marie Grantaire, Robert knew immediately that he was the luckiest man alive. It was love at first sight. Within a year, Marie and Antoine were married, and both the Tanquerels and Robert Grantaire lived in a little bit better wealth.

But not better health. After delivering her third child, Marie's health began to decline. The only physician Antoine and Robert could afford was unable to cure her, so they were forced to watch Marie slowly die.

After all these years, faith in the gods had faded from Robert's life. His prayer to Apollo had been unanswered; any good fortune he had was owed only to his own hard work. Robert had even developed a vague belief in the Christian God, ever-present in every Frenchman's life. But Marie had retained her worship, though she kept it a secret from her husband.

"Robert," she pleaded to him one night through her coughs. "Robert, I know you have left the worship of Jupiter and Juno and their court, but I still believe. There are gods who may heal me, but my prayers alone are not enough. Pray for me, please, Robert."

He could not deny her, especially in her moment of need, but years of unbelief were not easily swallowed. He decided to consult his old friend Antoine, though in other words.

"Antoine, Marie is very ill," he said one night in the Tanquerel Tavern. "I believe...she may die."

Antoine grunted. All these years later, he seemed different. Still handsome, but more...worn. More tired. Robert felt the same some days, but he still had hope, and the local women still sighed after his pretty (and unmarried) face.

"I know," Antoine said. "And then who will care for the children? Me?" He scoffed. "I am busy working."

"I can help," Robert said, "but it may not need come to that. If there was a way to save her...would you?"

"Of course," Antoine said, but he was not as earnest as he once might have been. "What do you mean?"

Robert frowned. "Asking...a god for help."

"God in Heaven doesn't hear us," Antoine said bitterly. "If he did, I'd be king in the palace. The Sun King, they're calling him."

"There is only one King of the Sun, and he is not Louis XIV," Robert agreed.

"Pray, Robert," Antoine said dejectedly. "If it pleases you and Marie, pray. I will pray, too, but it will do nothing."

Robert went home that night pondering Antoine's words. The real Sun King, the great Apollo, god of music, the sun, and most importantly, healing, may be the only one who could save Marie. He thought it ironic that the god of healing had also been the one he was most connected to ever since he had been driven out, the only he had ever even considered praying to in his wavering belief.

The old Roman prayers were different from the Christian ones. They required sacrifice, blood—at least, the way Robert had been taught them. From time to time, he wondered if over the centuries, the true traditions had been lost and morphed into what his family had once known.

Robert had no animals to offer, but he had his blood and his heart, and he made do with what was available.

"O Apollo, King of the Sun," he began, a knife in his hand. The door to the room was closed; the children were out and Marie was asleep. No one could hear him.

"I offer you—I offer..." He faltered, despair washing over him. What was the point? Was Apollo even listening?

Marie coughed in her sleep, and Robert's resolved hardened. Yes, he needed to do this—for his sister.

"O great Apollo," he said again. "I offer you my blood." Wincing, he pricked his finger with the knife and let it fall into the fire. "And I offer you a sacrifice: my heart." It was all he had to give. "Please, great Apollo, hear my prayer. Heal my sister, Marie Tanquerel, and my heart is yours to use."

He bowed his head, expecting nothing. He had tried; now Marie could die knowing that, and he could live convincing himself he had done all he could.

"Robert Grantaire," said a voice that sent shivers through his spine, and Robert looked up.

He gasped, for what he beheld was beyond belief. He fell to his knees in worship and cried out, "My god!"

His prayer had been answered. Apollo stood before him.

* * *

**Versailles, Missouri. January 14, 2009.**

Grantaire traveled to Versailles, Missouri. He thought the name to be hilarious considering his own place of origin, though it was not pronounced in the French way. But by the time he arrived, the strange happenings surrounding the Trickster had ceased. He went around, asked a few questions under a fake name, but Loki was gone.

Some victims had survived, others had not. Most were scarred only with traumatic memories of their (usually well-deserved) experiences. Grantaire hated these interviews, but if he wanted leads on Loki, he had to talk to those the god had hurt.

But every trail he followed led to a dead end. Grantaire was losing heart and hope, and he hadn't had much to begin with. This was part of the curse, he supposed, though it was the first time in a very long time the cause he couldn't support was himself.

Revolution and change were pointless; he knew that firsthand, and not just from 1832. He hadn't always been a skeptic, but immortal cursed life did that to a person. Grantaire got to watch humans make the same damn mistakes over and over and over again, and he'd stopped caring about them or himself.

Until now. Seeing Enjolras again had left something in him, a tiny flame Sam Winchester's advice had only fanned. Only now, with no leads left in Versailles, the flame was quickly dying.

It was Grantaire's last day in town. He was packing up his few belongings when there was a knock on his motel door.

Slowly, his hand crept to the gun he kept hidden on his person. Unless it was the staff (unlikely), there was no one he could think of who belonged there. Maybe Loki hadn't gone. Maybe he was here to wreck ironic justice upon Grantaire.

He crept to the door, then flung it open, his gun pointed in the visitor's face.

"What the hell, man?" exclaimed the person in his doorway.

Grantaire didn't lower his gun. This could still be one of Loki's tricks. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Were you sent by Loki? Are you one of his creations?"

"No!" exclaimed the person. "Put your gun down, and maybe I'll explain."

He lowered his gun, but he didn't put it away. "These bullets will kill a creature," he warned. "Apparitions, too."

"I'm alive and mortal, just the same as you," assured the visitor.

Grantaire repressed a snarky comment about his curse. This kid—and they were a kid, now that he got a closer look, no older than seventeen—didn't need to know about his stupid tragic past.

The kid was named Quinn McMillan, and they were genderqueer.

"I'm not here for a gender seminar," they said. "If you have questions, Google is your friend. All you need to know is to call me 'they' and 'them' and avoid gendered words, or else I'll punch you. Or leave."

"Probably the second one," Grantaire said. "I still have the gun. But that won't be an issue. I believe you." In living 347 years as a queer man, he'd met all sorts of people. Terms came and went, but the people were always there, even in times they weren't acknowledged. Grantaire had liked both men and women and more since the 1600s, and he was certain Jehan Prouvaire would have loved the word "genderqueer" had he lived in 2009 instead of 1832.

"Good." Quinn McMillan sat down on the motel bed. "I'm not one of Loki's tricks, believe me. But I heard someone called George Prouvaire was interviewing the people harmed by him, so if you're him, I think we could he help each other."

"Georges," he corrected. "It's French. Just call me Prouvaire." He frowned. "Wait, McMillan? Like Trisha and Jack McMillan, the ones whose house collapsed on them for no reason last week?"

"They were my parents," Quinn said.

"My condolences."

"Don't waste them."

Grantaire raised an eyebrow. "So did you do them in, or did Loki? And how do you know about him, anyway?"

"It was an accident," Quinn explained. "My parents kicked me out a couple months ago for being genderqueer. Fuck them. But I wouldn't  _kill_  them—my revenge would have come through spite and success and—well, you don't care about that. I ran into Loki on the street. I caught him finishing up another murder—the Blythe one, where the guy got twisted inside out." They shivered. " _Nasty_. I'll never forget that as long as I live."

"I saw the body," Grantaire said. "You're right. Gross." One of the grossest things he'd ever seen, and he'd seen a lot. Even his own deaths had never been so messy.

"Anyway, Loki would have done me in, too, but he..." They frowned. "He saw right through me. Knew everything. At least, it felt that way."

"Gods will do that."

"He said I'd given him another play toy, so he'd leave me be." Quinn grimaced. "Said he was called Loki. I laughed—then I threw up, and he was gone."

"Gods will do that, too," Grantaire said sagely.

"The next morning the news is reporting my parents are dead," they said. "I couldn't believe it. The police found me, said they'd take care of me, but one of the cops was Loki. He said he did me a favor, that I owed him, but besides—'people who won't share their homes don't deserve them.' Or their lives, I guess."

"Wow." Grantaire didn't really have anything else to say to that.

"I don't miss them, not really." Quinn shrugged. "They were awful, only loved me when they thought they could control me. But Loki took away any chance of them changing, and of my control of the situation. I don't think he should keep doing what he's doing, and I certainly don't want to owe him any favors. I need to find him and...well, I don't know exactly what I'll do, but I need to find him."

Grantaire sat back in his chair, pondering this situation. "So why did you come to me?"

"Well, you were interviewing victims and witnesses of the weird things going on here, so I figured you knew about Loki, and I was right," Quinn answered. "I thought you'd like to hear from me. Plus, you can help me."

"Why do you think I'd help you?" he asked.

"You're not really called Georges Prouvaire," they said. "You're no FBI agent. You want to find Loki, and I can help."

"I don't take kids along with me," he warned. "It's a dangerous road I follow." Damn, that sounded cliche, and he'd know. He'd spent years doing nothing but watch movies and eat.

"I'm ready for danger," Quinn said. "And I know where Loki is heading next."

"Where?" Grantaire demanded.

"I won't tell you unless you agree to take me with you." They grinned, like they'd just checkmated him.

"There's more than just Tricksters to worry about," Grantaire said. "Loki's not my only enemy. And while I generally don't look for trouble—this being an exception—trouble has a way of finding me."

"Fine." Quinn shrugged. "I've seen trouble before, and all kinds of weird shit, not just Loki. If you want my help, take me with you. If not, I'll do this on my own."

Grantaire hated this. He hated company, and he especially hated kids. But if Quinn really knew where to find Loki...

Well, he guessed he could always ditch them on the road once he found out where they were taking him. They  _had_ said they were ready for trouble.

He gritted his teeth. "Fine," he agreed. "Come on. We're leaving in an hour."

* * *

**Paris, France. July 30, 1686.**

Robert Grantaire fell on his face. He had only looked upon the perfect, beautiful face of Apollo for a moment before he was driven to his knees in genuflection.

Apollo was blindingly gorgeous, perfectly shaped with long golden hair and eyes so glorious that to call them simply "blue" would be a disservice. Around him shone the glory of the sun, and Robert's heart trembled. His prayer had been answered!

He felt a warm hand lift his chin. Slowly, he looked up into those radiant blue eyes. They pierced him to the heart, and Apollo knew all his mind in an instant.

"Robert Grantaire," Apollo murmured. The light around him lessened, until Robert could bear to gaze upon him. He found he could not look away: in comparison to Apollo, even handsome Antoine was a disfigured beggar. This was the most beautiful, the most perfect man he had ever beheld, and Robert fell instantly in love.

"Do you still offer me your heart, Grantaire?" Apollo asked.

He nodded, speechless. His parents and Marie had been right all along! How foolish he had been to doubt!

"Then take me to your sister," Apollo said.

Marie! In the wonders of the sun god, Robert had nearly forgotten the real reason Apollo was here: to heal Marie. He led Apollo into Marie's chamber. She slept fitfully, her eyes sunken into their sockets, her skin pale and clammy.

Apollo lifted a hand over her. He touched her forehead, and a golden glow spread through Marie's ailing body. When it faded, Marie sighed in her sleep. She looked healthy and whole once more; a smile graced her lips.

Robert nearly wept for joy. "She is saved!" he cried. "My god!" He went to kneel again, but Apollo caught him.

"I take your heart, Grantaire, as the price for Marie's life," he said. "You belong to me, now."

He drew Grantaire close and kissed him. Grantaire's head spun; his body filled with the heat of the sun. He swore he could hear music playing in the background.

When Apollo released him, he whispered into Grantaire's ear: "I will take you from this place, and you will be mine until your days end, for you are a pleasing offering unto me."

"But—my sister..." he protested weakly. Every part of him wanted to go with Apollo, to feel that sweet godly kiss again, but a part of his heart remained with Marie, whom he loved so much.

"She is healed." Apollo raised a perfect eyebrow. "Did you not offer me your heart? It is mine now, not Marie's, or that scoundrel Antoine's."

"Let me tell them where I have gone," he begged.

"No." Apollo kissed him again, more passionately this time, and Grantaire forgot his protests.

His god took him that day, to the heights of Olympus and to places far beyond France. Marie and Antoine and their children became only a distant memory, and all his days were wrapped up in godly bliss.

He forgot the name Robert; Apollo called him only Grantaire. He met gods beyond description: many Roman, the pantheon he had worshipped, but also Greek, Egyptian, and more. The world was a vast place, more so than he could ever have imagined.

One of Apollo's most frequent companions was the evilly witty Loki, a Norse god more commonly known as the Trickster. Apollo liked to watch Loki's tricks, and Loki liked to have an appreciative audience.

At first, Grantaire thought Loki's tricks were delightful, even when they frightened him. But there was always something that put him on edge when Apollo was distracted by another god. It made Grantaire realize how small and powerless and most of all, temporary, he was.

But then Loki would leave, and Apollo would make love with him and everything would be right again. Grantaire hardly ever thought of Marie, and never of Antoine or Isabelle. Apollo was all he needed; Apollo was all he thought of.

His nagging doubts never fully vanished, though, and they were waiting to be preyed upon at just the right time.

* * *

**American Southwest. January 23, 2009.**

"So tell me about Loki," Quinn said.

Grantaire snorted, readjusting his grip on the steering wheel. "Shouldn't you be telling me about Loki? Since you know where he's heading?"

"I told you," Quinn said exasperatedly. "Nevada. I saw him looking through Nevada news clippings before he talked to me last time, and unless I know nothing about maps, specifically the southern area. I bet you anything he's heading to Las Vegas."

"I don't like Vegas," Grantaire said. "I almost hope you're wrong, kid." He'd spent years in Vegas in the 70s. It was a great place to die in, and Loki would thrive there. Grantaire would only fall back into his old ways if he went there—casinos are not a good place for a desperate man with literally nothing to lose—and he needed to keep his head clear if he wanted to beat his curse and find Apollo.

"I'm not wrong," Quinn insisted. "But you tell me why—what's so great about Vegas?"

"Do you know anything about Norse mythology?" Grantaire asked.

They shrugged. "My dad liked comic books. I read a couple of Thor ones. Isn't Loki the bad guy?"

"Sort of." He thought for a minute. "He's a Trickster— _the_  Trickster, actually. He loves chaos, but most of all he loves a good, ironic trick. Vegas is a great place for him. He can be himself there, fooling people and having fun. Drinks and sex, probably." He laughed. "At least, that's what I did in Vegas, but it wasn't fun after awhile."

"But why did he kill my parents?" Quinn asked. "Sure, it's ironic, but why bother? Why not stay in Vegas all the time?"

"He travels, just to mix things up. Giving people exactly what they deserve is entertaining to him, I think, and he gets a kick out of serving up his twisted version of justice." Grantaire sighed. He knew that firsthand—after all, Loki had been there when he was cursed.

"Why are you after him, then?" they needled. "Did he play a trick on you, too?" They paused, then joked, "Did he curse you to be ugly?"

His stomach jolted. That was too close to the truth. "I used to be handsome, I'll have you know," Grantaire complained, forcing his voice to remain light. It had been a very long time since he'd cared, though. "Anyway, that's my business, not yours. You're only here because you can help me, not because I like you."

"Fine." Quinn only seemed a little offended. Grantaire had known people in the past who would have blown up in anger and frustration at a statement like that, but Quinn kept themself together.

They drove in silence for awhile. The journey from Missouri to Nevada was a long one, and it was filled with nothing but desert and corn.

To break the silence, Quinn turned on the radio. It blasted, country, but they turned it to pop.

Grantaire made a face. "No, thanks," he said. "I prefer classical, or nothing."

"No oldies?" Quinn asked, changing the station again. "You look like you were alive in the 80s."

He laughed. "Kid, you have no idea how old I am."

"Really?" they said, smirking.

"Guess," he challenged. This was funny—they'd never in a million years get it right.

"Mmm...37," Quinn estimated.

Grantaire whistled. "You're good, kid." He'd been 36 when he was cursed. "But no—close, but not quite."

"36?"

"Guess again."

"38, then."

"Nope."

"Then how old are you?" they demanded.

"347," he said truthfully. His 348th birthday was in a couple of months. Of course, he'd stopped celebrating after about 90.

Quinn rolled their eyes. "Very funny. Fine, don't tell me if you don't want to. It's not like I told you my entire life story or anything."

"Shouldn't have done that," Grantaire advised. "In this world of gods and monsters that you're now a part of, it's dangerous to hand out such information, especially to complete strangers. You're lucky I'm such a great guy."

"I didn't ask for this," Quinn said defensively.

"Neither did I," he said, but they both knew neither of those answers were entirely true.

"What should I do, then?" they asked.

"Well, don't go around giving out your real name, for one," he said. "Georges Prouvaire isn't my name, so you'd better find another one you like."

"I picked Quinn already," they said frowning. "My birth name didn't fit. I like the one I chose."

"I bet you considered other names," he said. "Use one of those. And when you talk to a god, be very careful. They can tell if you lie, and they aren't easily fooled, especially the god of fooling people."  _And the god of truth,_  he thought. "Half-truths work best, but whoever you're dealing with, prey on their weaknesses. Some gods are stupid, others are vain. Some follow codes of honor (their honor, not ours), and some will help you if you do a favor for them. But be very careful."

"Loki just...looked right into my mind," Quinn said. "He saw exactly who I was and knew enough to find and kill my parents. Is there any way I can stop him from doing that again?"

"You can develop mental barriers," Grantaire said. "It took me years to get it right, but it works." Apollo had taught him this, not wanting his divine friends to take advantage of him. "I'll teach you some tricks later."

"And what about creatures?" they asked. "Those are real, too? Like demons, or ghosts, or monsters."

"Salt, iron, fire are good for ghosts," he said. "They're basic, but dangerous. Demons are awful. I don't deal with those, but I've heard stories. I'm no hunter, just a guy who likes his community to be safe, wherever it is. And monsters have each have their own issues. I don't know all of them."

"What's a hunter?"

"Someone who seeks out the supernatural to contain or kill it." Grantaire shook his head. "Crazy, if you ask me. "They think they're making the world a safer place, but there'll always be something else out there. What's the point?"

After that, they drove in silence until it was time to stop for the night. It was a low-class motel, but it was all Grantaire could afford.

"What is your name?" Quinn asked as they brushed their teeth.

Grantaire paused as he took of his shoes. "Robert," he said. "But you can just call me Prouvaire." He made a face, then figured he owed a better answer: "No, call me Grantaire. That's my real name. Though I'd be thankful if you kept up the facade in front of anyone else."

"In that case, my name can be Bailey Hudgins," Quinn said. "I'll be your...cousin."

"We look nothing alike."

"That's fine. I have plenty of cousins I'd swear I couldn't be related to," they assured him. "Anyway, it would be less weird than the truth."

The next morning, "Georges" and "Bailey" drove through the desert again. Grantaire figured they would reach Vegas by the evening.

They were stopped for gas when Quinn grabbed his arm. Grantaire reached for his gun instinctively, hissing, "What is it?"

"There—behind that outhouse," they hissed. "Did you see that?"

He squinted. There  _was_  something there, something that made his stomach lurch.

"It's just a...dismembered...goat..." He trailed off. "Shit."

"What?" Quinn demanded.

"Get back in the car," he ordered.

"What is it?"

"If there's a goat here, looking like that, it can only mean one thing," he said.

"A chupacabra?" Quinn guessed. "Come on, those aren't real."

"Neither are gods," Grantaire pointed out, backing up slowly. "The tank's full. If we leave quickly, it won't notice us. Besides, they really are into goats, not so much humans."

There was a low growl behind them. Grantaire whirled around and shot in the direction of the noise, but he missed. The chupacabra, a huge, matt-furred beast with spines and a bloody maw, bounded toward them.

"Car! Now!" he cried out, shooting the thing again. One bullet hit its mark; the beast stumbled, but it still pounded toward him furiously.

Quinn did not get in the car. They raced around to the gas pump and tried to use it as a weapon, but the chupacabra ignored them.

Grantaire shot at it again and again, but it was too damn fast. Where the hell was the service here? Unless they knew better than to mess with the local monster.

He ran out of bullets and swore. The chupacabra was deadly close now. He could smell its awful stench and fought not to gag.

"Over here!" yelled Quinn. It looked over to them briefly, and was met with a stream of gasoline in its face. It howled, but cut up the pump with a claw, leaving Quinn weaponless.

Now even more furious, the dripping beast turned back to Grantaire. He pulled out a knife, spelled like the bullets, and prepared for the worst. Dying wouldn't be so bad, for him—he'd just wake up later anyway—but he was, against all odds, worried for his companion.

"Quinn! Run!" he cried, then charged.

The chupacabra screamed and met him head on, and within seconds of the blinding pain in his midriff, Grantaire was dead.

* * *

**Marseille, France. September 15, 1697.**

As the years passed, Apollo began to depart from time to time with increasing frequency. It distressed Grantaire to be left alone, often in places he'd never been before with no chance of fitting in. He inevitably turned to the bottle in his god's absence, but when Apollo returned, he was twice as joyful.

He was lucky this time to be left in France. Marseille was a fine city, and it was enough like Paris that it felt like home...almost.

Apollo had arranged for him to pass his time in the finest inn in town. Grantaire's new landlord was Pierre Pelletier, a man who knew exactly who Apollo really was. Pierre and his brother Nicolas were excellent company, and this time around, Grantaire was almost glad to be left alone. Though he loved Apollo, it was nice to have human company sometimes.

The Pelletiers, including Pierre's wife Odette, were well aware of the strange reality of things. They'd seen ghosts and monsters, and taught Grantaire a few tricks in how to hold his own against even such beings as gods.

They opened Grantaire's eyes. He had been spellbound by Apollo, trapped in his glory, blind to the truth.

"He's using you," Pierre said wisely. "I've seen it before. He takes handsome men and beautiful women, and tricks them into believing they are happy with him. You think you have all you want, but look around you. Where are your friends, your family?"

"I haven't seen Marie in..." Grantaire trailed off. He didn't even know how long. He had vanished without a trace, out of her life and out of Antoine's. Did they miss him?

"You have us now, Grantaire," said Odette. She smiled. "Humans. Real people. Gods are too good to be true. Hasn't Apollo ever gotten angry at you?"

"Only for good reasons," he said, but he faltered. Were those reasons so good, after all? "I think."

"And the other gods he is friends with," Pierre said with disgust. "Mercury? I've never been treated more rudely. And Loki?"

"Never trust a Trickster, I always say," Nicolas advised.

"Loki's not too bad..." Grantaire trailed off. "And besides, Apollo's not like that. He's just...a little overwhelming, sometimes."

"Here's how to keep your own head with him," Pierre advised. "Only tell the truth. Gods can tell if you're lying, and he's the god of truth and prophecy, so it goes double with him."

"There are tricks we can teach you to keep him out of your mind," Odette said.

"I know those tricks," he said, annoyed. " _Apollo_  was the one who taught me them! To keep me protected from his friends!" Keep your mind focused on one thing that no one could use against you, that was the key. He always thought of his mother's homemade bread. Eventually it became a reflex when speaking with a god, and Grantaire had become so used to it that he could even think of other things below their radar. He could even keep his mind from Apollo, though he didn't often feel he needed to.

"Why would he have friends who would hurt you in the first place?" Nicolas shot back. "You need other protection. Prey on his weaknesses—he's vain, isn't he?"

"I'm not his enemy!" he protested. "Apollo loves me!"

"Like he's loved countless other mortals?" Odette said innocently. "Until he cast them aside. Face it, Grantaire...where do you think he's going on trips like these?"

Grantaire's blood ran cold. She was right.

"He's taking advantage of me," he realized.

"Gods don't deserve their powers." Pierre shook his head. "Apollo brings his friends here all the time. They wreck the place, and pay nothing. We can't complain—they're too powerful, and they do bring us more customers. But at what cost?"

"It's not fair," Grantaire said, his shock and betrayal rapidly boiling into anger. "Why does he get all this power?"

"Meanwhile, people die every day on the streets," Nicolas said bitterly. "If we had even a fraction of his might..."

"Like a symbol of his," Odette mused.

"His lyre," Grantaire said, not thinking before he spoke.

All three Pelletiers went still. They stared at him.

"His lyre?" asked Pierre.

"Do you know where it is?" demanded Nicolas.

"For the good of mankind," Odette added sweetly.

Things went very fast after that. The lyre, when Grantaire had last seen it, was locked in Apollo's private room in the inn, no doubt guarded by magic as well.

The Pelletiers gave him the key and the courage to steal the lyre.

"After all, he loves you," Odette said. "He won't notice if  _you've_  taken it, until it's too late."

"This feels...wrong," he protested, standing outside the door.

"Do you want to help the world or not?" asked Nicolas.

Pierre clapped his shoulder. "Good luck, Grantaire."

Then they were gone. Confused as to how he'd gotten to this point in his life, Grantaire unlocked the door.

Inside was a fancier room than any other in the inn, spinning with magic. Grantaire was used to this after all these years spent with Apollo, and no alarm spells went off. He was trusted by the god.

There was the lyre: a majestic golden instrument imbued with the power of the sun. Even Grantaire knew it would be madness to attempt to steal it.

But the Pelletiers were right. Why did Apollo need it if he rarely used its power, and then only for his own sake? And if he really loved Grantaire, he would trust him...he would be able take it.

Grantaire reached out and touched the lyre, and then his world exploded. He flew across the room, and an unearthly screech filled the air. Blindingly bright and powerful, a figure appeared: Apollo.

"Grantaire!" Apollo bellowed as he cowered on the ground in the wrath of his beloved god. "What have you  _done_?"

* * *

**Las Vegas, Nevada. January 24, 2009.**

Grantaire revived in the back of his car. His gut ached, but he could feel the wound slowly healing itself. He would be back to normal in less than a day.

To his surprise, the car was moving. The radio blasted pop tunes, and Grantaire made a face.

How had he ended up in here? He assumed he'd be in another morgue, or still strewn on the ground by the gas station. If the chupacabra had done to him what it did to goats, it would have taken longer than it had for him to come back to life.

In the front seat of the car sat...Quinn McMillan? Grantaire blinked. How had they survived?

He didn't want to startle them so badly they crashed the car, so he laid still and silent as he waited for the rest of his wound to heal. How had any of this happened? Doubtless Quinn would tell him, if they didn't run away screaming after they found out he was basically a zombie. He doubted that would happen, though. They had seen creepy shit before.

He looked out the window as best he could. It was evening. A glowing city shone in the distance: Las Vegas, Nevada. Damn. Quinn was determined. In their place, Grantaire would have given up by now.

It was another hour before Quinn finally parked the car just outside a burger joint at the edge of the city. They took a deep breath, then sighed to themself.

"What next?" they muttered. "Probably get rid of the dead body in the back of the car. Right. Good plan."

Grantaire decided now was probably a good time to reveal he wasn't dead, before Quinn buried him alive. He sat up and said cheerfully, "Not so fast."

Quinn screamed and slammed the horn. Grantaire winced and shouted, "Quinn! Kid! Wait!"

They pulled out his gun from their own pocket and held it to his face with trembling arms.

"Now this is ironic," he said. "Isn't this how I treated you back in Versailles?"

"What  _are_  you?" Quinn demanded. "You were dead! I'm sure of it!"

"Take the gun out of my face, and maybe I'll tell you," he offered. "I swear I'm not a zombie. I won't eat your brains."

Slowly, Quinn lowered the weapon. "What's going on, Grantaire?"

"It's a very long story," he said, "like I told you before. The short version is: I was cursed to live forever in misery, and part of that means coming back to life after I'm killed."

"And you didn't think to tell me that?" Quinn exclaimed.

He shrugged. "Would you have believed me?"

"I don't want the short version," they said. "Tell me everything."

"Let's get a bite to eat, first," Grantaire said. He nodded to the restaurant across the street. "Dying always makes me hungry."

Quinn consented to getting some food—they were hungry, too—but only on the condition he explain everything.

"Look," he said between bites of mediocre cheeseburger, "I really can't tell you everything. It would take way too long. I was born in 1661, had a tragic backstory, then met a god. After making some very stupid life choices and upsetting him, he cursed me. Life sucked even more after that, and eventually I wound up in America."

"Where were you from?" Quinn asked, picking at their fries.

"France. Duh." He shook his head. "Robert Grantaire? Georges Prouvaire? Even my fake identities are French."

"Is this why..." Quinn's eyes widened. "That's why you're looking for Loki! He's the god who cursed you!"

"Not technically," Grantaire admitted. "Loki was there, and he might know where to find the one who did it."

"Who is it, then? Another Norse god?" they guessed. "Thor? He's the only other one I know."

"No, try another mythos," he said tiredly.

"Just tell me!"

"Apollo." He hadn't ever told anyone that. He'd always kept his secret, even from his closest friends. Les Amis had never known. Only hunters would believe him, and he just left it vague when it came to that. Did Quinn "deserve" to know? He barely knew them. Maybe he was just sick of keeping his story to himself.

"The Greek guy?" Quinn said, frowning.

"God of the sun, prophecy, music, truth...lots of things." Grantaire looked down as he thought about Apollo. He was afraid Quinn would see the grief and anger in his eyes. "We were lovers, until I betrayed him. He cursed me. I deserved it, probably, but..."

"And you never thought to tell me this? Damn, Grantaire!" Quinn exclaimed. "What's your deal?"

"How can you even ask that?" he snapped. "This is the most I've ever opened up to anyone in...centuries! Ever! To some kid I barely know! I'm a private person, and considering my curse kills or drives away everyone I care about, that's for a good reason!"

"I'm glad you don't care about me, then," Quinn snapped. "Once we find Loki, you and I are quits!"

"Thank God," he snarled. "I wouldn't want to hang around you any longer!"

"Loki?" said a voice behind them.

Grantaire froze. Both he and Quinn rose in their seats, Grantaire with his hand on the gun Quinn had grudgingly returned to him.

A janitor stood before them, leaning on his mop. He certainly hadn't been there a moment before. Quinn swore, and Grantaire drew his gun.

"Oh, you're looking for me?" said Loki with fake innocence.

* * *

**Marseille, France. September 15, 1697.**

Grantaire cowered before his god, knowing he had messed up beyond repair. He was dimly aware of another being watching him, but Apollo was all he could focus on. He was so horrified that he forgot even to think of bread.

"Apollo..." he mumbled, but there was no excuse. This was exactly what it looked like.

"You have betrayed me," Apollo thundered. He snapped his fingers, and the lyre returned to its original position. "Grantaire, I trusted you. I took you into my arms, and this is how you repay me?"

"The Pelletiers...they said..." He trailed off.

Apollo shook his head in justified wrath. "I will deal with  _them_  later. You..." He reached down and took Grantaire's chin in a burning hand. "I ought to kill you."

Grantaire's eyes watered. If he died now, he would never see Marie again...but did he not deserve it? He had abandoned her, betrayed the god he loved... Those Pelletiers—they had deceived him!

"Wait," said the other person, stepping forward.

Apollo turned to face them. Grantaire could see him clearly now: it was Loki!

For a moment, hope leapt in his chest, but Loki's crooked grin was far from comforting. " _Never trust a Trickster,"_  Nicolas had said, and despite the Pelletiers' betrayal, Grantaire suspected there was truth in that advice.

"What is it, Loki?" Apollo asked. Grantaire had never seen him this furious. He was more emotional now than he had ever been in their entire relationship, and somehow that broke Grantaire's heart. Maybe the Pelletiers had been right—Apollo only cared about him when he had done something wrong.

"Such a crime deserves a just punishment," Loki pointed out. "Stealing the power of a god...that's serious. If  _my_  lover had done that, I'd curse them."

"A curse—yes!" Apollo exclaimed. "To never feel the warmth of the sun again!"

Grantaire cried out in horror—surely he could never survive that!

"That's good, but I had something else in mind." Loki crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. "He wanted the power of a god, so give it to him," he suggested. "Make him immortal, never-dying."

Grantaire kept quiet. That didn't sound too bad—was Loki actually trying to help him?

"That doesn't seem like a curse," Apollo said doubtfully.

"He'll be forced to watch his loved ones dies," Loki said, and Grantaire decided he wasn't helping after all. "Oh—I have an even better idea! You care so much, pretty boy? You are an idealist, doing this for the people? Well, no longer! Take away his power to change his world, to aide a friend or a cause."

"That's monstrous," Grantaire protested weakly.

"With my lyre, you could have had power," Apollo said. "Now you will have part of that power: immortality, but with limits. I see the lies the Pelletiers sowed within you! You think we gods do not care for humanity, but that is not true—I cared for you, Grantaire. It was your beauty that drew me to you."

"Not my prayer? Not my sister's faith?" He was shocked and horrified. He had offered his heart, but only for his sister.

"My influence fades since Rome's fall," Apollo mourned. "My followers are few, and your sister never cared for me in particular. Why would I listen to your prayers until you offered something I wanted? Your heart, your body. That was mine, but no longer."

"But...you answered my prayer in the village...you sent Isabelle to save me..." Grantaire could not wrap his mind around this."

"A coincidence," Apollo said indifferently. "I let you believe I loved you before I did because it pleased me to see you so devoted. A god draws power from their followers, after all, and that was what you were to me. A beautiful follower—but now you do not deserve your beauty. I take that from you as well!"

Grantaire cried out. He felt a blinding heat within him. He could not see his face, but he knew with a certainty that he was not good-looking any longer. But that petty curse hurt far less than Apollo's betrayal. The Pelletiers had been right after all: Apollo only cared for him as far as he could use him.

"Fitting," drawled Loki. "Ugly and cursed."

"Yes," Apollo raised his head, and his eyes began to glow.

"Wait," Grantaire plead uselessly.

"I curse you, Robert Grantaire, to an endless life," Apollo spat. "One where you cannot support the cause of bettering humanity as you thought you could by stealing my lyre. And one where you cannot support those you care for, either! Robert Grantaire, you will live, but it will be an empty, meaningless life. But," he added, "let it not be one free from physical pain. You may be hurt beyond survival, but you will remain, forever, until—"

"That's enough," Loki said. He grinned at Grantaire, who felt no different from before, save for a feeling of hopeless despair that he did not realize at that moment would never fully leave him. "This is what you deserve. Now come, Apollo." He began to glow, and all of Apollo's belongings faded away. "We have better things to see than ugly, thankless mortals."

Casting one last hateful glance behind him, Apollo vanished, leaving Grantaire a shocked shell of a human, now cursed, in a dreary and dull inn.

Grantaire never saw Apollo again.

* * *

**Las Vegas, Nevada. January 24, 2009.**

He wasn't so lucky with Loki, however. Over the years, Loki appeared again and again in his life, always unwittingly. The last time had been a year before the Enjolras incident, when Grantaire had caught him trapping an exterminator in a comically large mousetrap. He'd had enough sense to get out of there before anything bad happened to himself, and Loki hadn't recognized him, but it was clear who that weird janitor was. What was his thing about janitors, anyway?

Loki the Janitor now stood before Grantaire and Quinn with a smile. "Bet you didn't expect me here, did you?" he asked.

"Actually, yes," Quinn said. "We came here looking for you."

"You know what I meant." Loki snapped his fingers, and Grantaire yelped and dropped his suddenly-hot gun. "Nu-uh, ugly boy. Play fair."

"Nothing with you is fair, Loki," he pointed out.

"Fair according to my rules, I mean." Suddenly Loki sat at the table with them, wearing a businessman's suit instead of a janitor's outfit. "So, my dear friends. I missed the beginning of your conversation. Let me—ahh," he said, surprised. "You know how to keep me out of your heads!"

"This isn't my first time meeting a god," Grantaire said, his eyes fixed on the ground where his gun lay.

"Well, then, fill me in if you won't let me fill in the gaps myself," Loki said. "Who are you? Hunters? What do you want from me? And don't say nothing," he warned. "I don't like  _liars_." He grinned, showing far too many teeth for a human mouth.

"Don't you remember me?" Quinn demanded. "You killed my parents, like last week!"

"I kill a lot of people." Loki shrugged. "But yes, I remember you, Quinn McMillan. Why are you here? I thought you'd be grateful."

"I didn't want them...dead!" Quinn exclaimed. "Maybe they deserved it, but why'd you do it? They could have changed their minds, or come around eventually, or...or..."

"They're all the same, the people I kill," Loki said. "Dicks, really. They wouldn't have changed. So, what do you  _want_ from me? I can't bring them back."

That was a good question. Grantaire frowned at Quinn. They hadn't told him exactly what they expected to get from Loki upon meeting him, or how they would accomplish it. He had wondered, but he hadn't wanted to pry. Besides, that would have been hypocritical.

"I want you to listen," Quinn said firmly. "I want an apology. And I  _don't_  want to owe you like you said I did! I want—"

Loki waved a hand and Quinn shut up. Grantaire looked at them in concern. Their mouth was stuck shut, and they pounded on the table furiously.

"Let them go," Grantaire said. He glared. "They just want to talk."

"A Trickster does not  _apologize_ ," Loki said loftily. To Quinn he said, "I'll think about it—the listening part, I mean, and maybe even your debt to me. Until then, don't talk too much."

"Fuck off," Quinn growled, suddenly able to talk again, but they kept quiet after that.

"And who are you?" Loki asked Grantaire. "You look...vaguely familiar."

"Who I am is not important," Grantaire said. "I'm looking for someone you know, another god. Do you know where Apollo is?"

"Apollo? And why should I—" Loki laughed suddenly. "Oh, you! It's Grantaire, right? I remember now. Apollo's plaything, the one who double-crossed him. What was is it—1698?"

"1697," he corrected.

"Yes, that curse I came up with was quite effective, I see," Loki said, pleased. "And you're still ugly, too! I thought that was a nice touch to it. That's why I didn't remember you—you used to be so handsome."

"Wait, what?" Quinn interrupted. "I thought you said—"

"Shut up," both Loki and Grantaire said at the same time. Grantaire was glad he'd be parting ways with this kid very soon. They were finding out way too much about his past.

Quinn glared and turned away in a huff. "Fine!"

"I was trying to help you, you know," Loki said. "I did save you from death."

"And cursed me to a life of misery!" he snapped. "Well, I'm sick of it. I'm going to find Apollo and—"

"I'm sick of  _this_ ," Loki proclaimed. He stood and said: "McMillan, Grantaire—I'll listen to you. I'll lift your debts. I'll even give you the information you want. But—" He grinned, pausing for effect. " _Only_  for one of you. First, you must entertain me. And if one of you survives— _then_  we'll talk."

"What?" shouted Quinn and Grantaire simultaneously, and then the world around them fell away.

* * *

**Paris, France. October 1, 1697.**

After Apollo abandoned him, Grantaire never saw the Pelletiers again. He didn't want to think about what Apollo had done to them. But with their inn deserted, he could not stay in Marseille for long.

He returned to Paris. He had nowhere else to go, and his sister was his last remnant of any sort of human connection.

He'd been back to Paris with Apollo, of course, but it had been a drastically different experience than his life with Marie and Antoine. He barely recognized the run-down home where the Tanquerels had lived.

He knocked on the door. He had never felt so low as he did now. Not a moment went by where his mind was not occupied by Apollo's departure. He could scarcely believe he would never feel Apollo's burning touch again, or kiss him, or—

The door opened. Grantaire did not recognize the young man standing in front of him.

"Does—does Marie Tanquerel live here?" he asked falteringly.

The man—he was scarcely more than a boy—frowned. "Who are you?"

She had moved. Or—he refused to think of the other possibility. She had been alive and well the last time he had seen her, thanks to... Another wave of grief washed over him as he thought of Apollo.

"I'm..." He couldn't bring himself to give his name. He had abandoned Marie, left her vulnerable, without even a goodbye! At least she'd had faithful Antoine to look after her.

"Robert," he said at last. "Robert Grantaire. Marie is...she was my sister."

The young man's jaw clenched. "Mother," he called back into the house. "You have...a visitor."

"Mother?" Grantaire echoed. "You...you're not...Jacques?" Marie's oldest, Jacques Tanquerel, had only been five years old when he'd left. The man who stood before him was at least seventeen—about as old as he'd been when he'd left the village. Had he really spent eleven years with Apollo? It had felt like both shorter and longer.

"Come inside,  _uncle_ ," Jacques said, saying the word like it was an insult.

Everything inside was eerily familiar, yet entirely different. There was one of Grantaire's shirts strewn on the floor, but it showed eleven years of wear by someone who didn't fit it. Here was a flower in a crude vase, the same one he'd bought for Marie and Antoine on their wedding day, only cracked and worn now. The home smelled the same, but different at the same time.

"Jacques?" called a weak voice. Grantaire shivered to hear Marie's voice again, as frail as she had been before Apollo had healed her.

Jacques led him to the back room. Grantaire took a deep breath and followed him, staring at his sister for the first time in eleven years.

"Marie?" he asked hesitantly, lingering in the doorway.

She looked up at him from her bed, her frame gaunt and her eyes hollow. She looked terrible, as if Apollo had never healed her.

"Robert?" she breathed. "No...I am dreaming. You look...different. Tell me I am dreaming."

"I can send him away, mother," Jacques said. From the way he gripped Grantaire's arm, he could tell Jacques would be more than happy to send him away.

"It's really me, Marie," he said, his voice breaking. She barely recognized him. He was ugly now, another gift from Apollo. Sometimes he even startled himself by staring in the mirror. "I'm...I'm sorry." He knelt at her bedside, wondering what he was sorry for. For leaving her? That she was still sick? For breaking her heart?

"Where have you been all these years?" she asked. "You just...disappeared. Without any warning or reason, without even taking your things. I thought you had died. Antoine said you left us."

"Where is Antoine?" he wondered. He couldn't tell her the truth about where he'd gone. She'd never...but wait. She  _would_  believe him; she believed in the gods, too.

Marie laughed hollowly, but then her amusement turned into a cough. Jacques hurried to her side, propping her up with a blanket.

"Antoine must have thought your leaving was a sign," she said when she could speak again. "He abandoned us two years after you did. Even after I was healthy again—overnight! It was very strange, but I was too distraught over you vanishing to appreciate it...Perhaps that is why I became ill again, this last month. I am being punished for not appreciating my gifts."

"No..." Grantaire's blood turned to ice. Antoine...had left? But he...he was a good man...

Living with Apollo, Grantaire had realized many things about himself. He had always known, deep down, but he had come to accept and understand that he was attracted to both men and women, and others besides. In the moments not consumed by Apollo, he had contemplated his past, and realized he had been just as in love with Antoine as his sister had been, though Antoine never realized and had not return his feelings. (Of course he hadn't; good Christian men did not have affections for other men. Roman men, however, were not always confined to such expectations, especially when involved with a god.)

But it was not just his feelings clouding his judgement, he was sure of it. He could scarcely imagine Antoine betraying Marie like that...but hadn't Grantaire himself left, too?

"And Jacques..." He trailed off. "What about the other children?"

"Charlotte died." Jacques bowed his head. "She was only three. We did not have enough food after Father..."

"Louise ran away two weeks ago," Marie said. "She is only fourteen...her lover is sixteen. She left a message with a friend. She said she couldn't bear to live with a dying mother and a brother who...who didn't care for anything other than myself, not when she had another choice."

"I cared for her, too!" Jacques cried. "I...I did..."

"Robert, where did you go?" Marie cried. She gripped his arm tightly. "All these years...you look healthy, though I cannot say happy. Why did you leave?"

He couldn't lie to her, though the truth was beyond belief. He decided just to tell her. "Marie, I prayed to Apollo. He answered my prayer, he healed you—but he took me away with him."

"Mother, don't listen to him," Jacques scoffed. "He's clearly crazy!"

"You...prayed for me? And the gods answered?" Marie sighed. "I knew it...I knew you didn't..." She coughed again, more violently this time.

"You should go," Jacques said, clutching his mother's arm. "Haven't you done enough?"

"I just..." He didn't know what to say.

"Don't leave," Marie rasped. "Robert..." She fell asleep.

Grantaire didn't leave. He stayed in what remained of the Tanquerel home for three days. He did his best to help out with Marie, despite Jacques' dislike of him. He tried to make up for eleven years of lost time, but there was too much to do.

On the third day, Marie died.

* * *

**Loki's false reality. January 24, 2009; if time applies.**

When Grantaire's vision returned, he and Quinn were not in Las Vegas anymore.

They were in a large arena that reminded Grantaire vaguely of the Colosseum, only in its prime. He and Quinn stood in the center of the arena, two swords lying on the ground before them.

Across the stadium sat Loki in a magnificent throne, no longer a janitor, but a glorious ruler. The arena's seats were packed with a roaring crowd, an audience of faceless people.

"Grantaire! McMillan!" Loki bellowed, his words ringing across the arena. "This is my challenge to you! Like the Romans of old— _your_  people, Grantaire—"

"What?" demanded Quinn. Grantaire only glared at them.

"—you face a gladiator game! Two contestants, versus each other!" Loki laughed. "Now, I know you're both eager to be rid of each other, so this ought to be entertaining! The victor of your battle will get to interrogate the one and only  _me_ , so fight well! The survivor wins!"

"Survivor?" yelped Quinn.

Grantaire didn't waste any time. He lunged and grabbed one of the swords. Quinn was only a fraction of a second behind him.

He winced. He'd picked up fencing in his 347 years, but this was a totally different kind of sword. He had no idea where to start with this blade.

Quinn was having just as much difficulty with their sword—probably more, considering they were only seventeen. Grantaire should have used this to his advantage, but he suddenly couldn't bring himself to care.

Why did it matter if he won? He wouldn't be able to break his curse, anyway. And if he lost, so what? He'd come back to life and be stuck in the same loop all over again. Everyone else moved on without him, while he was stuck in the same story.

The hollow, ugly feeling in his stomach surged into his chest. He deserved this, anyway. He was the worst person alive. Apollo had cursed him for a reason, and this living hell, while technically Loki's idea, was Grantaire's own fault. What was the point of his life if not to suffer? Grantaire had that down.

He wanted to drop his sword and let Quinn kill him, but that would solve nothing. He ought to kill himself, but still he'd be stuck dying and living again.

But wasn't that why he was here? If he just killed Quinn, he'd be a step closer. But his curse was working on him, he knew: there was suddenly no drive to change, nor ability to make a difference.

Bleak depression overwhelmed him. (He would be a therapist's nightmare, if he ever he brought himself to a point where he cared enough for therapy.)

He realized Quinn had not attacked him. They seemed to be having second thoughts as well, though doubtless for different reasons.

"I want a show!" Loki shouted. "Would you prefer a different weapon?"

Their weapons changed to guns. Quinn was no gun expert, but that weapon was easier to wield than a sword.

Grantaire, a decent marksman, could end this right now. One shot, and Quinn would be dead. He didn't care about them, he wanted to be rid of them...

He rolled forward, putting on a "show" for Loki. Quinn shot, missed—the crowd cheered anyway. Grantaire shot and missed as well, not really trying.

About to shoot, he hesitated. If Enjolras could see him now...he was just as terrible as he'd been in the 1800s. Worse. How could he kill a kid like Quinn? He'd reconciled with Enjolras. Surely he could reconcile with Quinn.

No. That was absurd. The only reason his curse had allowed him to make amends with Enjolras was because he was already dead. Quinn was still alive.

Quinn took a step towards him. "Grantaire," they hissed. "I have a plan!"

"What is it?" He laughed bitterly. "There's no point. Loki will just kill us both, anyway. Never trust a Trickster."

"You said he likes irony," Quinn insisted. "My plan is ironic. Just listen to me!"

Grantaire shot at them, actually trying to hit them this time. Quinn jumped out of the way, yelling, "What the hell! I'm trying to save both of us!"

The crowd booed. Grantaire agreed with them. "I can't be saved," he said. He aimed again, but Quinn shot first. The bullet sank deep into his gut, and Grantaire fell onto his knees, dropping his gun. The pain was strong, but it wasn't anything he'd never felt before.

Now the crowd cheered wildly. Loki laughed. "Good!" he said. "I had my money on the immortal, but good!"

Quinn approached him, their face full of disgust. "I never thought I'd ever shoot someone," they said faintly.

"Well, you did." Already, Grantaire could feel his wound healing. "Not that it did much good. My curse, remember?"

"Exactly," Quinn said. They leveled their gun at his brain. "I'd say sorry, but you'll come back to life anyway. Doesn't Loki know that?"

"Maybe," Grantaire shrugged, his hand inching toward the gun lying useless on the ground. "Hurry up if you're going to kill me." If he kept them talking, maybe he could get close enough to grab it...

"Kill him already!" Loki shouted. "Or at least, talk louder! I'm getting impatient!"

"I know what I'm doing, Grantaire," Quinn said, and they shot him in the brain.

The last thing that Grantaire thought before dying for the second time in less than 24 hours was that this had to be a personal record.

* * *

**Remote French village. Autumn, 1697.**

Grantaire left Paris as soon as Marie died. He couldn't bear to face Jacques, and he didn't deserve to stay for whatever tiny funeral service would be arranged.

He knew, deep down, that Marie's death was his fault. She could have lived longer if he had not come home. Apollo's curse had taken effect: the thing he cared about most, his family, had failed. Marie was dead; his nephew, Jacques, hated him and would never speak to him; Antoine had left long ago.

He didn't know where to go. For a month, he wandered the French countryside, until suddenly he had a brilliant idea.

He traveled to the village where he had been born and raised. He didn't know what he would do there, only that it was a place to go.

Walking through the streets of a place he had once called home left a rotten feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had always felt ill about something or the other ever since Apollo's curse, but now he felt disoriented in addition.

At first, Grantaire had been more distraught over losing Apollo than he had over his curse, but now that it had claimed its first victim in Marie, he had begun to understand the depth of his doom.

He watched children play in the streets, only to be shoved away from him by anxious mothers. He, an interloper, was not welcome here.

Grantaire was accosted by a well-muscled man not much older than himself. "Monsieur, who are you?" he demanded.

Grantaire squinted at him. "You're...the baker's son." Hatred boiled within him: it had been the baker's family who had tried to kill him all those years ago.

Another man approached: a friend of the baker's son. "Watch yourself, stranger. Jean  _is_  the baker."

Grantaire stared at him. "I know you, too. You're the miller's son, the one who always swore he'd marry Isabelle." He remembered Isabelle, all the more fondly now he knew she had saved him of her own volition.

The miller's son flushed. " _I'm_  married to the butcher's daughter, and you—"

"Robert?" said a familiar voice. "Robert, is that you?"

Grantaire turned around to face a woman who was far more homely and normal than he remembered. Her blonde hair was streaked with gray, her brow lined with stress, and her voice cracking with shock. But her eyes were the same—a bright, clear, blue that saw into his heart.

Reminded of Apollo in her gaze, Grantaire looked away. "Isabelle," he mumbled. "It's good to see you."

"Grantaire?" Jean yelped. "Get away from my wife! Pagan outcast!" He lifted a hand to strike Grantaire, but Isabelle pulled him away.

"Leave him alone," she said sternly. "Haven't we hurt him enough? Besides, it's been twenty years."

"Wife?" Grantaire said blankly.

"Jean and I have been married for nineteen years," she said tiredly and without looking at her husband. "Come, Robert. They don't want to talk to you, but I do."

She led him away from the village proper and out to the stream behind the buildings. She sat down on its banks, and he sat beside her. The stream seemed so much smaller than it had when he was younger.

"I didn't know you..." He trailed off. "Well. Jean."

"He wanted a wife, and I denied him your sister." Isabelle picked at the grass at her feet, not looking him in the eye. "He took me instead."

"I'm sorry." Grantaire couldn't keep his eyes off her. She'd aged beautifully, and upon closer inspection, she was nothing like Apollo. She was human, and real. He loved her like he'd never loved her when they were young. He yearned to touch her, but the time and distance between was too much.

"It's not so bad. There are worse men, and I love our children." Isabelle sighed. "How is she? Your sister?"

"She died." There was nothing more he could say.

"I'm sorry." Now it was her turn to comfort him.

"It was so sudden," he said, and it had been, to him. "One day she was there, and the next...she was gone." He wasn't sure if he was talking about her death, or when he had left.

"Where have you been, Robert?" Isabelle asked. "I know why you left, but where did you go for all these years? Why did you come back now?"

"I'm different now," he said. "I'm not the same person I was when I left."

She sighed. "Fine. Don't tell me. I don't know why you would, after what we did to you." She sighed, leaning into his side. "You know what I've been doing since you left."

"Isabelle, are you happy?" he asked her suddenly. "I know that I am not."

She stared into his eyes and brushed his hand. Gently, she laid a single kiss upon his lips, something she'd never done as a youth, then murmured, "Does that answer you?"

"You are beautiful, even after all this time," he whispered, leaning into her soft touch.

"You are hideous," she whispered back, "but I like you better this way. Oh, Robert, you've changed so much."

"Mm," he said, leaning forward for another kiss. This was all he'd dreamed of as a child, and now, after all his heartbreak, he could feel her love healing him.

Instead of kissing him again, Isabelle leaned back. "Robert, do you know I thought of you every day since you left? It was wrong to turn you out for your parents' foolish beliefs. We could have helped you—we should have helped you. But I had Jean, and then my children, and I never went after you."

Robert bit his tongue, holding back a remark about the truth of the gods' existence. That would not help him now.

"I liked you, when we were young," he said. "But you never saw me the same."

"Oh, you were cute," Isabelle said, a smile wrinkling her face. "But it wasn't until after you left that I began to wonder. I think it was easier to love a man who wasn't there with me when I Iived with a man like Jean. But now...it's too late." Her face fell. "I am married. You are an outcast. The village will drive you out again. They did it once, they will do it again."

"Is this not an answer to a prayer?" Grantaire said, though he no longer knew who to pray to. "I've come back." He knew she was right, but he couldn't bear to leave her. "I have nowhere else to go. I will stay, until I cannot stay any longer." He sighed. "Will you have me, while I am here?"

She touched his face, hesitated, and then stood. "I must return home, Robert."

He stood and grasped her hand. "Isabelle, will you have me?"

She closed her eyes and kissed him again. He drew her close to him and kissed her back, drawing strength from her.

"Yes," she murmured, breaking away. Then she let go of him, brushing her hair out of her face. "I have to go back home. Return by another way. My uncle is dead, but the new priest will give you sanctuary if you ask. Tell no one of what happened. Meet me here again tomorrow night."

Grantaire stayed in the village for two weeks. Each night, he and Isabelle would slip away and talk of her life, though rarely his. Sometimes that was all; sometimes they did more. Grantaire felt consumed by her. She was an old flame he had forgotten, but now it was burning him again. She was what he needed, after what Apollo had done to him.

But all too soon, it came to an end.

"Jean suspects," Isabelle told him one night. "We must decide. He will drive you out by the morning, and punish me, if you do not do something."

"I don't care about the village," Grantaire said, holding her hands. "Isabelle, all I need is you." He couldn't lose her, not now— "Run away with me. I'll take you to Paris—I know people there. I can find us a home, I—"

"Paris?" she wondered. "You've been to Paris?"

"And beyond. I can take you there," he promised. "Oh, Isabelle, I've seen the  _world_!"

"Robert, I can't," she said, tears welling up in her eyes. "I love you, but my children...Jean I do not care for, but my babies..."

"I can't lose you!" His voice cracked. "I'll do anything. I'll pray, I'll kill, I'll bring your children along—let me have this, Apollo!"

Too late, he realized the name he had let slip from his mouth was not Isabelle's. This was the mirror of an argument he'd had with Apollo months before, and before that of a disagreement with Antoine. Why did everything boil down to this?

"A...Apollo?" she stammered. She let go of his hands. "Who is that?"

"My..." His god. His lover. His damnation. With horror, Grantaire realized that this was the curse taking action once more: it had killed Marie, and now it would tear him from Isabelle. He would never have love or peace again.

"Who is that?" Isabelle demanded, stepping back. "Another woman? A Parisian woman? Is she why you returned here?"

"He's not a woman," he said helplessly. "He's my..." And now he had revealed another sin. He could tell Isabelle knew what he meant, and to her, loving a man was unforgivable.

"Robert..." Isabelle's beautiful eyes darkened. "Who is Apollo?"

"My god," he whispered, bowing his head. "He is my god."

"You haven't changed at all," she growled. "You have betrayed me—and God!" She spat at his feet, then turned and ran away.

He started after her in despair, then fell, sobbing, to the ground.

The villagers came not long after that, holding torches and the dreaded noose. Isabelle had betrayed him. Grantaire bellowed and fought, but it was no use. Jean was the one to slip the rope around his neck, but Grantaire had eyes only for Isabelle, standing at the edge of the crowd and staring at him.

This time, she did not save him.

At least, he thought as the life left his body, he had thwarted Apollo's curse. He was dead, and immortal no longer, and in death, he would find peace at last with Marie's spirit in Pluto's realm.

* * *

**Loki's false reality. January 24, 2009.**

Bullet wounds were some of the easiest to heal for Grantaire. Of the 76 times he'd died, a majority of 47 of them had been by a gun's bullet. The other 22 had taken much longer to revive from on average, ranging from 15 years in the case of the time he'd cremated himself in July 1832 to about 3 days when he'd drowned trying to escape the mafia in 1927 to 6 months after being impaled by a stake by some hunters who mistook him for something actually dangerous.

Being shot, however, only took an hour or so to recover from. Grantaire wasn't sure if time applied in Loki's false reality, but he was certain it hadn't taken him long to come back to life this time around. He still felt pain in his gut, and he'd have a headache for days after this, but he was fully operational.

He wasn't in the arena any more. He laid on the ground in a small, low-lit room. In the middle were two cushioned chairs. Loki sat in one, Quinn McMillan in the other.

Grantaire was both furious with and impressed by Quinn. On one hand, they had killed him and betrayed him to get what what they wanted. On the other hand, they had known it wouldn't inconvenience him for long and it showed a lot more guts than he'd known they had. Still, after what they'd been through to get to this point, he probably shouldn't have been surprised.

Grantaire lay on his back, so he had a good view of the conspiring pair. He was a few feet away from them, thankfully with Loki's back to him. He listened intently to their conversation, wishing he'd heard the rest of their conversation, but he'd been too busy being dead.

"...said this before," Loki was saying, "but fine. If you insist. Sorry."

Quinn took a deep breath. "Okay. Thanks." They laughed hollowly. "Not that it means much, considering I had to drag it out of you."

"I could still kill you, if you'd like," Loki warned, leaning back in his chair. "You're lucky I decided to play fair today."

"Nah, you wouldn't." Grantaire didn't know why Quinn was so confident. Loki wasn't one to be messed with. Quinn would be better off just keeping their mouth shut. "I met every requirement, and you kind of did do me a favor by killing my parents in the first place."

"You're a smart kid who's got a rotten family." Loki shrugged. "I can relate to that."

"And wouldn't you have been furious if someone else had 'taken care of' your rotten family for you?" Quinn pointed out, crossing their arms. "I'm not mad they're dead, it's just that they were my problem, not yours. You took away my ability to deal with it."

"I've given you everything you wanted, McMillan," Loki said. "I listened to you talk for like, an hour, and then I even  _apologized_. You're just stalling now, and I can tell you're getting tired of thinking about bread."

Grantaire's heart warmed against his will. They were using his bread trick!

"What do you  _really_  want?" Loki pressed. "Your parents are dead. That problem's over and done with. I let you give me a telling-to and released you from your debt. I've been more than generous! What's left to say?"

Quinn glanced nervously at Grantaire's body for a second. Suddenly, Grantaire realized what they were waiting for. They wanted him to come back to life and get what he wanted. That had been their plan all along—no wonder they'd killed him! He instantly forgave them.

"What? Him?" Loki turned around, and Grantaire quickly froze, playing dead as best he could. If Loki looked into his mind, even just to bread-level, he'd realize he wasn't dead anymore.

"He's dead," Loki continued, turning back to face Quinn, and Grantaire relaxed slightly. "You didn't like him anyway. I'll take care of him soon."

"Yeah, but..." Quinn stalled. "He never told me about himself. I'm curious. How did he know you?"

Grantaire didn't like where this was heading. Quinn didn't need to hear about that,  _especially_  not from Loki. It was time to act.

He looked around. Miraculously, his gun was the same distance away from him as it had been when he'd died. Slowly, slowly, as to not draw attention to himself, he reached for it.

Meanwhile, Loki talked. "He was Apollo's lover, until he tried to steal something very powerful. He wanted the power of a god. When Apollo caught him, I was there, too. Apollo wanted to kill him, but I took pity on the guy and tricked Apollo into turning him immortal."

"But there was more to it than that," Quinn pressed. "He said something about a life of misery?"

"Well, there's always a price to immortality."

_That's one way of putting it,_  Grantaire thought as his fingers brushed the gun's hilt.

"So what did you do to him?" Quinn asked.

Slowly, slowly, Grantaire wrapped his hand around the gun. He had a good grip on it. Now to figure out what came next.

" _I_  didn't do anything. That's why he was only here looking for where to find Apollo. I couldn't lift his curse."

Grantaire glared at Quinn. They locked eyes with him for a fraction of a second, and he knew they got his message.

"But—I thought he was immortal," Quinn said loudly. "How can he die?"

Grantaire sat up, as quietly as he could. As long as Quinn could keep Loki talking...

Loki laughed. "Well, there's a limit even to immortality, and he's reached it. He's dead as a doornail now, just like you almost were."

There was no use trying to be quiet any longer. Grantaire sprang to his feet and pressed the gun into the back of Loki's brain.

"Not quite," he growled.

Loki froze. For the first time Grantaire had ever seen, he was totally caught off guard.

Quinn rose to their feet. "Hah!" they exclaimed. "We tricked the Trickster!"

Loki sighed. Grantaire couldn't see him, but he imagined he was rolling his eyes. "Humans. You're too cocky. I knew he was alive all along. I  _let_  you trick me, and—"

"Nope," Grantaire corrected. "I really was dead, you were right. Only, I came back to life a few minutes ago."

"What?" Loki snapped. "No. You can't do that. That's not what immortality means!"

"Guess you should have told Apollo what you meant," Grantaire said, iron in his voice. "That son of a bitch really hated me. He made sure that no matter how bad my life got, I had to keep on living it. You think I never tried to kill myself? I did. Nine times. Never worked. I always came back."

Suddenly, Grantaire's hand burned as the gun became white-hot. He shouted and dropped it. Loki now towered over him, grabbing him by the shirt.

"Enough," he growled. "Alright. You tricked me. Good job. I admit I didn't see that coming, and it has been entertaining. But this goes no further."

He dropped Grantaire, and then he was back to his cocky, cheerful self. "You want to know where Apollo is?" he said.

"Yes!" Grantaire exclaimed. At last—he was getting some answers! "Where is he hiding?"

"Hard to say." Loki shrugged. "He moves around a lot. It's like chasing the sun—you'll never catch it, and it'd burn you if you did."

"Where is he?" he insisted. "I'm not giving up, not this time. I've got too much to die for."

"Morbid," muttered Quinn. Grantaire glared at them. Of course he was morbid, after all he'd been through!

Loki closed his eyes and concentrated. "I don't know where Apollo is, exactly. I haven't seen him since 1997. But I can tell you he's in America."

"Great," Grantaire snapped. "That only narrows it down to fifty states."

"Try California," Loki suggested, opening his eyes again. "He's bound to be where there's sun even in the winter, and the west coast is always full of hippies and artists."

"Is that anything more than a gut feeling?" Quinn asked. "And California's huge. Can't you be more specific?"

Loki raised an eyebrow, and the lights in the room flickered. "Do you doubt me?"

"Never trust a Trickster," they quipped.

"I could spend another lifetime looking for him in California," Grantaire said. "I need something more solid. Can't you gods sense each other or something?"

"It's not that simple." Loki glared, and the lights flickered again. Grantaire knew he had to tread very carefully here, or Loki might decide to give him another curse.

"Please?" he offered.

"I'll send him a message to meet me in San Francisco," Loki said. "You show up instead. If he kills you for misleading him, that's on you, not me."

That was probably the best Loki would do for him. "Thanks," Grantaire said. San Francisco. It had been awhile since he'd been there.

Loki snapped his fingers, and they were back in the burger joint in Las Vegas. It was totally dark outside, and Grantaire felt like he'd just walked out of a movie theater into the real world.

"Now get out of here before I change my mind about killing you both," Loki warned.

Grantaire's gun, a fabrication of Loki's, had disappeared upon their return to reality, but his real one was still on the floor. He grabbed it and backed out the door, Quinn right beside him.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll never go looking for you again."

He walked outside and all but ran away from the restaurant. It wasn't until he stood right outside his car that he felt safe enough to turn to Quinn and exclaim, "What the hell, kid?"

"What do you mean?" they said, caught off guard.

"What kind of plan was that?" he demanded.

"Hey, well, it worked!" Quinn said defensively. They crossed their arms and glared on him. "I got what I wanted, you got what you wanted, and we're free to go!"

"You fucking killed me!" he shouted. "Sure, I came back to life, but it still  _hurt_!"

"It was the only way!" they protested. "Come on, Grantaire! Even if the stakes hadn't been so high for both of us, the look on Loki's face would have been worth it."

He let out an explosive breath. "You are  _so_  lucky I figured out what you were doing, or you could have died, or worse."

"But it  _worked_!" they reiterated.

He ran a hand through his hair, trying to calm his nerves. "Yes. It worked." And he had to admit he couldn't stay mad at them for long—the plan had been genius. Besides, he had almost been ready to kill them, and at least their plan had only resulted in a temporary fatality.

"Sorry for killing you, though," Quinn said awkwardly, looking down. "I didn't really want to."

"Yeah, okay, whatever," he grumbled. "Get in the car, kid."

"Are you going to San Francisco?" they asked.

"Well, not right now," he said. "It's almost midnight. We'll stay here tonight."

"Okay," Quinn said. They yawned. "I'm exhausted after all that, anyway."

Grantaire turned to get into his car, but he was interrupted by a sudden and fierce hug from Quinn. He froze, completely surprised.

"Thanks for...everything," Quinn mumbled. Then they let go of him, before he even had a chance to decide whether or not he wanted to hug them back.

"What?" he said blankly.

Quinn punched him on the arm, but he could tell they didn't mean it. "You know what I said. Now  _you_  get in the car."

Still confused, he did what he was told.

* * *

**France. The 1700s.**

Grantaire's second life began with a heave of breath through a crushed windpipe. The noose was still tight around his neck, but he was not hanging from the tree any longer. Instead he lay sprawled on the ground at the edge of a graveyard.

Weakly, he scrabbled at the rope around his neck. With some effort, he managed to loosen it and draw it over his head. Coughing, he sat up and breathed heavily. He could feel his neck and throat growing stronger by the second, as if healing itself.

Grantaire stared at the rope in his hands, despair crashing over him. He was, somehow, still alive. Apollo's curse of immortality was not so easily thwarted, it seemed. It would bring him back to life, but not prevent him from the suffering of death.

He knew he couldn't stay here for long. Whoever was going to bury him would return soon, and he didn't want to be caught alive.

Grantaire left the village again, resolving never to return. He spent months wandering the countryside, trying to find something that would make life worth living, but he had no comfort. He tried hanging himself in despair, but even though his suicide was successful, he found himself alive again only a day later.

Eventually, he returned to Paris. If there was anything that could distract him from his curse, it would be found there.

He turned to alcohol first. Intoxication made the isolation and pain almost bearable at first, but eventually he found even that made him more miserable. Sex didn't help, either, especially since his flings never lasted. He gave up on finding romance after being kicked out of a mistress's home when she discovered he was—of all things—not a native Parisian.

In 1706, Grantaire celebrated his 45th birthday and realized his physical body hadn't aged a day since being cursed by Apollo. It seemed his curse of immortality would not be thwarted by old age. In 1708, his neighbors began to notice, and his landlord turned him out for being a disturbance.

Grantaire picked up hobbies: art, dance, juggling, knitting, sports, and more. He found work and got enough money before being fired to learn how to read and write, and later to study subjects like religion, philosophy, and history. Nothing satisfied him, and he never got far in whatever he was focusing on before giving up on ever getting good at it. He began to recognize the curse in every aspect of his life as he failed in one area after another, and stopped trying to care. But apathy didn't lead to happiness, either.

Between being cursed and 1718, he died six times: first by being hung in the village, then by hanging himself. The third time he was the victim of an armed robbery while wandering the countryside; the fourth, he was killed in a construction accident while on a job. He was shot by a National Guardsmen one time after he insulted them and the king while intoxicated, and the sixth time, he choked on a piece of food. Not his most glorious moment.

Each time, he came back to consciousness, his body healing itself through even the most miraculous of situations. Grantaire forgot his adoration of Apollo and turned to hating the god who had cursed him.

In 1724, Grantaire drank so much alcohol that his body simply could not recover from it. He died, but rose six months later from the grave with a body that had purged itself of poison. That was his first experience of digging his way out of a grave, but luckily he wasn't buried very deep. The poor in France were not given proper graves.

His life continued like this for decades. He moved around Paris in all that time, changing names and habits. Nothing lasted longer than a few years. Any companions left him, any interests failed him.

In 1775, he was going once again by the name of Robert Grantaire, and the French Army found him. Impressed into service to the crown during a raid on his local tavern, Grantaire didn't have the strength of will to resist. He became a soldier.

He was incredibly bad soldier, but he had little else to do and the Army needed all the men it could get. Grantaire found it almost amusing that every other soldier he met seemed so preoccupied with how they would die. He just wished he could stay dead.

A few years after being impressed into the Army, France went to war with Britain. This wasn't even really  _their_  war, but France would do anything to get revenge on Britain after their loss in the Seven Years War, including helping the Americans in their revolution.

Grantaire was one of the lucky few soldiers who were sent to fight in the far-off land of America. He never got to meet the famous General Washington while in America, just his aide, a fussy man who talked far too much—and this was coming from Grantaire, who'd long since stopped caring about what others thought and just talked as if no one was listening. He did, however, meet the Marquis de Lafayette, if only briefly.

America was a very different place than France, but Grantaire discovered he could still die there. He was shot in 1778 in a battle in Rhode Island. Once he revived, he was free to explore the country all he wanted, since the army counted him as dead.

In 1779, Grantaire grew sick of America. He took a ship home to France and decided to start over. He gave himself a new name and lived in a village far from Paris or anywhere else he'd been before.

Unfortunately, he didn't even have to be revealed as a pagan to be hung in a village. He just had to sleep with the wrong people—mostly other people's wives, but being caught with a man didn't help his case. After dying there, he went back to Paris. At this point, it was 1789.

He had very bad timing.

Grantaire wasn't really involved in the French Revolution—he had problems of his own, and if he'd learned anything so far, it was that people never changed. But by 1793, it didn't matter much if you were involved or not. People were being killed left and right for saying the wrong thing, and it had been a very long time since Grantaire had said something  _right_.

He died three times in 1793. The first, he was beaten to death by some Republicans after loudly professing for all to hear that the Revolution was pointless. The second time was actually not really related to what later became known as the Terror; he was knifed and robbed in an alley. The third time was by far the most interesting: he met the guillotine.

He'd had some hope of not reviving after losing his head, but alas, he found himself alive once more in 1797, one hundred years to the day since being cursed. Fate was ironic.

More depressed than ever, Grantaire lost himself in alcohol again for seven years or so. In 1804, he found himself impressed into the Army again, but he was sick of fighting for a cause he didn't believe in, no matter who was leading France this time. By this point, he was a firm skeptic, and the only thing he believed in was that nothing would change.

In his 143 years, Grantaire had encountered other supernatural entities. Some were creatures beyond description, many of which had killed him. Others were beings, who used him for their own purposes. He'd even met a few mortals futilely fighting against this, but he'd never been stupid enough to join them—until now.

Napoleon was a believer in the supernatural, at least to some extent. He waged wars against human empires, but he also funded exploration into the shadow world. Grantaire managed to talk his way into this secret team of hunters.

This was far more interesting than shooting Englishmen. Grantaire became interested in their work, though he didn't for a second believe it was doing anything for "humanity". (Did he count as part of humanity at this point? He wasn't sure.)

He learned about vampires, demons, monsters, gods. He encountered some, killed others. A few killed him and whoever happened to be with him, but he revived to tell the tale. He worked like this for five years, until in 1809, his secret was discovered.

Napoleon's hunters were not pleased to discover a supernatural being in their own ranks, even one as harmless and useless as Grantaire. He didn't even try to struggle as they staked him through the heart. Not even the weapons they thought foolproof against the supernatural could kill him permanently.

In 1810, Grantaire rose again, and his cycle of misery and grief began anew.

* * *

**American Southwest. January 25, 2009.**

"So...what next?" prompted Quinn.

The two of them were back in Grantaire's car, driving on the open road. Armed with the information that he would find Apollo in San Francisco, Grantaire was in a better mood than he had been in years.

"Well, if all goes well, I find Apollo and beat the shit out of him," he joked.

"Will that help you?"

"No," he admitted, "but it will make me feel better."

"Until he curses you again," Quinn pointed out.

Grantaire didn't respond. How  _would_  he confront Apollo? He hadn't seen the god since 1697, over 300 years ago. Would Apollo remember him? Would he still care enough to keep the curse intact? Would Grantaire be given an even worse curse for daring to remove the one he already had?

He ought to just stop and give up right now. There was no point to it, he would never succeed. He ought to just accept his fate and suffer like he deserved...

Grantaire didn't even realize what he was doing as he got into the exit lane. He would end this now—he didn't want to see Apollo again, anyway.

"Are we stopping for gas?" Quinn asked.

At the sound of their voice, Grantaire recentered. He shook his head and pulled his car out of the exit lane at the last second.

"No," he said. "Sorry...it's just, I've never gotten this far before. Every time I try and do something, I fail. I feel like giving up. I'm amazed that I'm still on track."

"Is it because of your curse?" they guessed. "How did that happen, anyway? You said Loki was there, and he mentioned something about you being Roman."

Grantaire fidgeted in his seat uncomfortably. "I'd rather not talk about it, kid."

"Haven't you ever told the story before?" Quinn asked.

"No," he muttered. "After I was cursed, I didn't have anyone  _to_  tell. Everyone left me or died."

"Tell me, then," they said. "I'll listen."

"And you won't leave me, too?" he retorted. "That was our plan all along."

"Well..." Quinn paused. "I'm not going back to Missouri, and I don't know what else to do. I figured I'd tag along and help you. You helped me, after all."

"You'll leave, too," Grantaire said, shaking his head. "Everyone does, in the end."

"Hey, not if we break your curse," Quinn said. "Come on, Grantaire. Tell me about your life."

Grantaire glanced at them. Their brows were furrowed, their eyes serious. They really wanted to know. And after all this time, he found he wanted to tell someone, and it might as well be them.

"Alright," he said, and he began to tell the story. "I was...sixteen, when it all really started. Actually, it started before then. See, we lived in France, in this tiny little village, but my parents for some reason believed in the old Roman religion. It was a secret, just them and me and my sister knew about it, but when my parents died..."

Once he started it was easier to keep going. The whole tale spilled out of him: from his parents' death and Isabelle saving him and his sister, to meeting Antoine, to his relationship with Apollo. He told them about his curse and Loki's part in it, about Marie's death, about finding and losing Isabelle, about his life in France before meeting Les Amis.

When he got to that part, he faltered. Les Amis de l'ABC had been closer to his heart than anyone since Marie or Apollo, and telling their story was harder than he expected.

"Hey," Quinn said, their voice soft. "You can stop now, if you want. You've trusted me more than I even expected, probably more than I deserved. I don't want to push it."

Grantaire sniffed, holding back unexpected tears. "No," he said. "I want to tell you, I think. It's just...hard." He took a deep breath. "Okay. I'm ready. So, after I met Joly and Bossuet, they ended up dragging me to this meeting of a political organization they were part of..."

Quinn was a good listener, nodding and encouraging him when he needed it, and not butting in with too many of their own comments, but when he first described Enjolras, they interrupted. "Oh no," they said. "He sounds like Apollo all over again!"

Grantaire laughed. It seemed like he had a type.

"You know, I thought that at first," he admitted. "But no. Enjolras was a different man—a better man. He was everything Apollo should have been. I guess...Apollo was charming in an arrogant way. I couldn't tell at first, but he was too good to be true. Enjolras was confident in a charming way. He knew exactly where he stood and what he believed, but he had enough grace and goodness in him that you wanted to listen, even if you couldn't quite believe."

"You sound like you're still in love," Quinn commented.

"I...yeah." Grantaire looked down. "I never really got over him. Or any of them. Les Amis...they were my friends, real friends, like I hadn't had since my curse. Even Enjolras, for all I was probably the only one he couldn't bring himself to believe in, even he came around in the end. Or maybe I came around to him—or both."

"So...how did it end?" Quinn asked.

"Badly." Grantaire sighed. "Les Amis didn't leave me like everyone else. They left differently. Their revolution...well, it didn't go as planned. They all died. Every single one."

"And you?" they asked. "Did you die, too?"

"I fell asleep, in the middle of the battle," he said. He was still ashamed of it, though he knew his curse wouldn't have allowed him to make a difference even had he been awake. "I woke up when Enjolras was the only one left."

"Oh my god," Quinn breathed.

"I died with him. Holding his hand, trying to believe just for a moment that my death would mean something." He smiled bitterly. "To Enjolras, it did. But I woke up a few hours later, and life moved on, no matter how much I wanted it to end."

"I'm sorry," they said. They touched his arm.

"Hey, kid," he said, his voice wobbling a little. "It was a long time ago." He kept his eyes on the long, empty road. It was still a long way to San Francisco.

"Doesn't mean it doesn't matter," Quinn said wisely. "Well...what did you do next?"

He laughed hollowly. "A month after the rebellion, I couldn't live with myself any longer. I'd been beheaded before, and that took me five years to recover from. Well, cremating myself took fifteen. But after that it was the same old deal. I moved from Paris, tried to find something to distract myself from the pain. France was changing, but not necessarily for the better. It looked like they'd all died for nothing."

"But they didn't," Quinn said. "France has democracy now. The world's a better place."

"There's still death and suffering and injustice," Grantaire said. "Watch the news. Look at my life—hell, look at your life, kid! Your parents kicked you out for being genderqueer. If mine had known I was queer, bisexual, whatever you want to call it, they'd probably have done the same. Things don't change."

"But they get better," Quinn insisted. "Gay marriage was legalized in California, like, last year. There's no more slavery. Sure, there's problems, and those are important, but we're making progress."

"Sure. Whatever." Grantaire didn't feel like arguing with them, unlike usual. He was already exhausted from telling them his life story. He coughed and changed the subject. "Anyway, I moved to America in 1901. There's not much of a story after that, at least not one you didn't learn in history class."

"Public education, another thing that's way better now than in the 1800s," Quinn pointed out.

"Mm." Grantaire grunted.

"Come on, Grantaire, you know I'm right," they insisted. "You just don't know how to have hope. You should—"

"Alright, heart to heart over," Grantaire interrupted. This was getting too real for him. It was hard enough thinking about the past; he didn't want to talk about the future.

He sat up straight, wincing slightly. His back hurt from sitting in a car all day. Why couldn't he have been cursed at 25 instead of 36? If he was going to be immortal, he wished he could have been perpetually young instead of eternally middle-aged. "We should find a place to sleep tonight. We're not far from San Francisco, but it's getting late."

"Yeah. Sure." Now Quinn was the unresponsive one.

Grantaire found another cheap motel to spend the night in, not too far from San Francisco. He and Quinn didn't talk much after that conversation. He thought they were digesting everything he'd said and figuring out what to make of it. It was what he was doing, after all.

Grantaire felt totally vulnerable. He'd never opened up that much to anyone—ever. He felt crazy telling Quinn, whom he'd only known for a week or two, his entire life story, when he'd never even told his sister or Les Amis. But maybe that was part of the reason why he had—he could be upfront with them, and their history with him was limited. There wasn't much to ruin if it all went wrong.

And yet, if it did, Grantaire thought he'd be heartbroken to lose the kid. He didn't see them as his child—he wasn't responsible enough for that, and they were too self-sufficient—and not quite his younger sibling, either. They were more like...what was the gender-neutral term for niece or nephew? He couldn't think of one in either French or English. Screw society and languages for being so stupidly binary!

"Grantaire?" Quinn said as he was trying to fall asleep that night.

"Yeah, kid?" he asked. He'd felt vaguely anxious all night, wondering what they would say when they finally had thought enough about his story to form a response. He was glad they had something to say, but all the things they could tell him made him feel even more nervous.

"I just want you to know—you're pretty great, even if you don't believe it. You've helped me so much, and you don't deserve all you've gone through."

Grantaire was glad the lights were off and they couldn't see him. He blinked back tears, touched even though it was hard to believe what they said. "Thanks," he said gruffly.

"And..." Quinn sounded embarrassed now, but they forged onward: "I promise I won't abandon you like everyone else."

"That's a lot to promise," he said. There were so many ways to break a vow like that—through death, or a change of mind, or a betrayal on his part. But he didn't feel like ruining the moment—not this time. "But thanks."

"G'night, Grantaire." They yanwed. "Let's kick some godly ass tomorrow."

"G'night, Quinn."

But Grantaire would not get any sleep that night.

As soon as Quinn drifted off, his mind went into overdrive, even more than it had been before. He'd been stupid these past few weeks—getting killed, trusting Loki to follow through with contacting Apollo, telling Quinn all his secrets. It was bound to backfire on him somehow, and he could think of a million different possible disasters in store for him. But chief on his mind was the dawning realization that he cared about Quinn.

On its own, that didn't seem too bad. He finally had someone to talk to, and they weren't encumbered by stupid feelings or other motivations. Plus, Quinn was going to help him confront Apollo.

But that was the easiest way Grantaire could think of for them to get killed. Quinn had had a close call with Loki, but they wouldn't be so lucky a second time, especially facing a god with a personal vendetta against Grantaire.

And there was the added danger of Grantaire's curse. Anyone he'd ever been close to had suffered. Marie had died; Apollo abandoned him; Antoine left his family; Isabelle betrayed him; Les Amis had died. Grantaire was the common thread in all those tragedies and losses. Just by being near Quinn, he was endangering them.

Around 3:15am, Grantaire made up his mind. Leaving only a scribbled note for his newfound friend, he took his car and snuck out of the motel. San Francisco was only 20 miles away. The sun was soon to rise, and if Grantaire knew him, Apollo would be too.

As for Quinn... It hurt Grantaire to abandon the kid, but this way, at least he could protect them. And hey—they were keeping their promise.  _They_  weren't the one abandoning him.

* * *

**Paris, France. May 12, 1821.**

By 1821, Tanquerel's Tavern was totally gone. Grantaire spent his time drinking in other places in Paris, but every now and then he'd go the part of the city where it used to be. He didn't go to feel bad, but he always ended up leaving that way.

On one such occasion, he was accosted by a total stranger. The woman grabbed his arm and pulled him into the street, berating him: "Olivier! You smell like you've been out drinking again! I can't believe it, that's the third time this month! And you look as if you've been in a fight too, did you break your  _nose_ , Olivier? Ohh, I swear, this is the last time I'll ever let you out without a watch, you—!"

Grantaire shook himself from her grip. "Are you crazy, woman? Who do you think you are? I do not know who this 'Olivier' is, but he's not me! Can a man not get a drink without being so  _rudely_  interrupted—"

"Oh, shut your mouth, Olivier!" the woman snapped, slapping him. "You're drunk. I'm taking you back home!"

Despite his protests, the woman dragged him to a cramped apartment a few blocks away. He was too drunk at the time to struggle too much, and she had an iron grip.

The woman opened the front door of the apartment and was met by a man who looked remarkably similar to Grantaire before he'd been cursed; that was, before he became an ugly drunkard.

"Madeleine!" the man cried. "I am so sorry! I came back, I could not bear to leave you again, but you were gone, and—" He stopped short, staring at Grantaire in confusion. "Who is this, Madeleine?"

The woman, Madeleine, stared between Grantaire and the other man. She bit her lip and said to Grantaire, "You're not Olivier."

"That is what I  _said_ , Madame!" he cried. "If you had  _believed_  me the first time—"

"You mistook me for  _him_?" the man, who must be Olivier, protested. "He's hideous."

Madeleine let go of Grantaire. "Well...if you'd been drinking and had broken your nose and got your clothes really dirty..."

"What!" exclaimed both Grantaire and Olivier, equally insulted.

"Madame, I am not as hideous as you claim!" Grantaire said. "I—" But he was hit with a sudden wave of nausea and vomited onto her shoes.

"Eugh!" Madeleine shrieked.

"Sorry," Grantaire said, belching.

"Madeleine, I can't believe you," Olivier said in exasperation.

"Ohhh, don't try to get out of what I'm going to give you tonight!" Madeleine threatened.

"Bring this poor sod inside," Olivier said in disgust. "He deserves an apology, Madeleine. We can clean him up."

"I'm good," Grantaire protested as Madeleine and Olivier guided him into their apartment.

"No, no," Olivier said. "What's your name, stranger? I'm Olivier Tanquerel, and this is my wife, Madeleine."

Grantaire froze, the name "Tanquerel" sending a shock through his system. "T...Tanquerel?" he stammered.

"Yes, Tanquerel," Olivier confirmed.

It could just be a coincidence. It could just be that the name had become more common. But in his life, Grantaire had never run across another Tanquerel before, and Olivier's vague resemblance to himself made it almost certain that this man was a descendant of his sister.

He didn't know what to do about that, so he vomited again.

"Hey, hey," Madeleine said. "Eurgh...I'll clean this up, Olivier, you get him some food and a spot on the floor to sleep. Give him one of your shirts for now, he looks like he's about your size."

Grantaire spent that night in their apartment. When he woke in the morning, humbled by a hangover and their kindness, he thanked them and apologized profusely for the mess he'd left in their home. He talked and talked, but never let his name slip. He doubted they'd recognize the name Grantaire after two centuries of being Tanquerels, but he didn't know if he could handle it.

"I really should be going," he said that afternoon, after making good of their offers of food and washing his clothes. "Thank you again, dear friends, for all you've done, and again apologies for my appalling behavior."

"Won't you tell us your name?" Madeleine said.

Grantaire needed to get out of there. Every second he looked at Olivier, the more he could see the resemblance to his younger self. There were bits of him that looked also like Antoine and Marie, and of course other people Grantaire had never met, but the combination made his heart too full of emotions he'd rather not think of. He knew that if he told Olivier and Madeleine his name he would be tempted to check up on them or grow attached, and if he did so...well, his curse would only harm them and himself.

"Good day, friends!" was all he said as he bowed to them and backed his way out of their apartment.

Grantaire moved across the city the next week and made a point to never visit that part of town again.

* * *

**San Francisco, California. January 26, 2009.**

It wasn't hard to find Apollo. Grantaire knew the kind of places he liked to hang out: always fancy, always with lots of music and art. There was a music festival in Golden Gate Park, and if Apollo was going to be anywhere, it would be there.

Grantaire had to come up with a plan. Unfortunately, he couldn't think of anything other than to just demanding his mortality back. He decided to look for Apollo first, and then think of something.

Apollo would be waiting for Loki. Where would Loki meet up with Apollo? Grantaire thought about this as he made his way through the crowds of people in the park, grateful for their cover.

He checked out the performance areas, flower conservatory, and golf course within the park. Nothing. At last he looked in the art museum, and immediately he felt a strangely familiar warmth. Apollo was here, somewhere in the building.

Grantaire closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He could do this. Every part of him wanted to run away and never return, but he had come this far. He would beat his curse.

He wished Quinn were here with him to tell him he could do it. He was full of regret for leaving them, but he was sure he'd made the right decision. This was just too dangerous for them.

Grantaire wandered through the museum, not paying attention to the art. Apollo had a warmth about him that he could sense from a distance. He was not far away.

At last, he heard the god's voice: shockingly familiar and yet with a totally different tone and accent. Grantaire shivered as he remembered the last time he'd seen Apollo, and he gathered all his courage to face the speaker.

"...I knew him, love," Apollo said. He looked like a young man, with sunny curls and eyes such a sparkling blue Grantaire could see their color from across the room. He stood with his arm around a dark-haired young woman who stared at him adoringly.

"What a talented artist!" Apollo continued. "But the good die young, or else the world could not contain them."

That was just the kind of philosophical bullshit Apollo always said. When he'd been with him, Grantaire had eaten it up and hung onto every word, but now he saw through the fanciful lies. And it hurt him more than he wanted to admit to hear Apollo say "love" to someone else. Of course he would have moved on; he hadn't cared much about Grantaire in the first place.

"Did he know you were...you know?" asked the woman.

Apollo laughed. "No, Janie," he said condescendingly. "Very few know. You're one of them."

Grantaire felt ill. He was one of them, too, though he wished he never had been.

"Where's that...person you're meeting here?" the woman, Janie, asked. "He's late, isn't he?"

"Loki's never been...timely," Apollo admitted. "He'll show up soon, I'm sure of it. Though it's quite odd...his message was cryptic. Tricksters usually are, but he mentioned something about a mutual friend."

Grantaire strode across the room to face them, steeling himself for a confrontation. Too late, he wished he'd thought ahead to this moment, but if he didn't reveal himself now, he never would.

He strode up to Apollo, forcing a smile onto his face. "That would be me," he said, waving his hand. "Hi." He nodded to Janie; she was probably just like him, fooled by Apollo's enchanting personality and powers.

"You?" Apollo looked at him with a disgust that was all too familiar. He had worn the same expression on the day Grantaire had been cursed. "Who are you?"

He didn't even remember. Grantaire didn't really expect him to, but it still hurt.

"Robert Grantaire," he said, folding his arms. "1697. Remember, Apollo?"

Apollo stared at him for a few moments, until suddenly comprehension dawned on him. "You..." he began, but Grantaire could tell he was surprised.

"Apollo, who is this?" Janie asked, staring at him in fright.

"Loki was right," Apollo said, narrowing his eyes. "He's an old... _friend_."

"Lover." Grantaire smirked. "Just say it outright."

"From 1697?" Janie exclaimed.

Apollo looked around. "This is no such place for this discussion," he snapped. "Come with me, Grantaire. We'll talk."

Well, he wasn't dead yet...but neither had he made his demands. Grantaire swallowed his fears and followed Apollo, who now hold Janie even closer to his body, if possible.

"You never mentioned him!" Janie hissed.

"Not now, Janie," he said tightly.

Apollo led them out of the museum and into a secluded part of the park. He stood in the shade of a tree and let go of his new lover, turning to face Grantaire.

"Why are you here, Grantaire?" he demanded. "Do you want me to curse you again? I never wanted to see you again!"

"Who are you?" Janie asked, her eyes wide with fright.

"I met Apollo after he healed my sister, in France in 1686," he said to Janie, purposefully ignoring the god. "He took me without letting me say goodbye. I went along with him, I loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone before, but it all fell apart in the end. He never loved me. He was just using me, like he's using you!"

"Don't listen to him, Janie," Apollo growled. "He betrayed me. He tried to steal something from me, something very valuable. I cursed him for it, I cursed him to live forever and never to have the power he wished for! I know  _you_  would never do such a thing, Janie, love."

Janie clung to Apollo. "No, no, of course not," she assured him. "I love you, I love you too much for that!"

"So why are you  _here_?" Apollo asked. "I ought to hurt you for just showing up! I never wanted to see your face again!"

"After three hundred years of misery, I never wanted to see  _your_  face again, either," Grantaire said, "but I'm sick of it all. Did you know your curse made it impossible for me to stop living? I've died 78 times, but every time I've come back. No matter what I do, I have to keep on going. I'd rather be dead than this!"

"You deserve it, after what you did," Apollo said. He raised a hand, the one that wasn't wrapped around Janie, and said, "I could make it worse. I could kill you, and then kill you again when you came back, and over and over again—"

"Stop!" cried Janie. "Apollo, that's horrible! Surely he's suffered enough?"

"Take my curse away," Grantaire begged. "At least let me die! Please!"

"You come here to  _beg_ , after what you did to me—"

"I was misguided, I was wrong!" Grantaire spat. "Is that what you want to hear? I'm not the same man I was in 1697! I hate you and everything you stand for, Apollo, but I don't still wish I'd stolen your lyre, whatever I thought I would do with it!"

"I will never take it away," Apollo proclaimed. "Ever! Grantaire, I will curse you again! I curse you to—"

"Stop!" Janie shouted. She stepped away from Apollo, distraught. "Apollo, this...this isn't like you!"

"Janie," he said, growing instantly softer, but Grantaire could see anger glinting in his perfect blue eyes. She wasn't safe, either. "Janie, please understand."

"A just punishment is one thing, but this is monstrous," Janie said. She stepped in line with Grantaire. "Three hundred years of misery? No one deserves that. Apollo, take his curse away. Please—for me?"

"Janie, love..." Apollo said. To Grantaire, it sounded almost like a threat. "Don't make me do this."

"Take it away from him!" Janie insisted. Grantaire was shocked to find such an unlikely ally. Had a similar situation arisen during his time with Apollo, he doubted he would have reacted this way. Janie was a far better person than he was.

"Apollo... _please_ ," Grantaire begged. He couldn't imagine Apollo being merciful, but perhaps if he truly loved Janie...

"Very well." The glow of Apollo's righteous anger faded from his eyes. "I will take it away—for you, Janie."

Janie broke into a wide grin of relief. "Oh, Apollo, I knew you would!" she exclaimed, casting herself into his arms. She kissed him softly, then stepped aside. "Thank you, thank you!"

"Thank you," Grantaire murmured. He bowed his head, waiting. But something inside him was still unsure. This was all too easy. And Apollo hadn't lifted his curse yet—there was still time for everything to go wrong.

But perhaps Apollo truly was ready to move on. "Robert Grantaire," he said, his voice ringing through the air, "I hereby lift your curse and remove your immortality. No longer will you be subject to revival after death; no longer will you be barred from supporting those things you love. You are free."

Grantaire didn't know what to expect. There was no light, no lifting of a centuries-old weight. But all of a sudden he felt a little bit different, a little bit hopeful.

He raised his head and smiled. He was  _free_. It had worked! He had persevered! And he had succeeded!

"Thank y—" he began, but suddenly he saw that Apollo's eyes were still full of hate.

"I am not finished," Apollo growled. He pushed Janie away from him and reached out to grab Grantaire's throat with a grip as hard as iron and hot as the sun. He choked on a scream.

"You are not free from death," he hissed. "And now, I will give you an eternal reward!"

There was the sound of a shout behind him, and Apollo's head turned to face the commotion, but it was too late for Grantaire.

His eyes rolled up into his head as the last breath left him for the last time, and everything went black.

* * *

**Paris, France. May 12, 1829.**

Grantaire first met two of his best friends in a fit of sobriety. It was 1829, and after having died of alcohol poisoning a second time, he had resolved to quit drinking entirely. With his body purged of alcohol, it wasn't too hard at first, but every time he had a spell of depression—which was frequently—he'd be tempted by the bottle. It was hard finding things to live for, anyway.

To keep his mind off his troubles, Grantaire enrolled in a medical class at a university. It was there that he met Joly. Joly was a medical student who was fearful of every illness and malady one could imagine, but he was still one of the happiest people Grantaire had ever met.

Joly befriended him even as Grantaire lost motivation in his studies. After dropping out of the class, Joly took him out to drink his sorrows away, and Grantaire drank for the first time in months.

It was then when he met Bossuet. Bossuet was afflicted with chronic unluckiness, something Joly joked out to be a medical condition, but along with Joly, he was incredibly happy.

That night was one of the best Grantaire had enjoyed in decades, leading to many more. His glass became a source of amusement instead of misery, and hangovers were much improved by the company of...friends.

Even after leaving his half-hearted attempt at his studies, Grantaire found time to spend with Joly and Bossuet. It had been a long time since he'd had a proper friend, and now he had two. He knew it would inevitably fall apart like everything else in his life, but the experience was so wonderful that for the first time in 200 years he allowed himself some hope and happiness.

But that did not mean Grantaire's life was free from misery. Curse or no curse, he struggled to remain happy. With these wonderful highs came terrible lows, and he lived in fear of Joly and Bossuet discovering his secret.

He thought if he simply didn't tell them about his curse, they would be unaffected by it. He made up lies about his past and stuck to them, weaving truths in as well. Joly and Bossuet had no reason to doubt him, and believed it all.

Grantaire was tormented by memories of all the times he had died. His physical wounds had healed, but the emotional ones remained. On his worst days all he thought of was Marie and how deeply he had wronged her. Sometimes he still missed Apollo and the certainty he'd known back then.

He knew little now.

Joly and Bossuet were political men, something Grantaire, a firm skeptic, found amusing, but he envied the firmness of their beliefs. Still, he enjoyed long philosophical conversations with them, poking holes in their Republican ideals and reminding them how little the world actually changed.

Grantaire was many times invited to a meeting of these young Republicans. They called themselves "Les Amis de l'ABC", a clever pun but an empty promise. He declined every time; he had no use for political prattle.

It was on one of his dark days that he went walking. There was a bridge he was fond of; it overlooked a shallow stream, but it was just high enough that it would hurt to leap from it. He'd never tested it before, but he often wondered if it would kill him or not.

He sat on the edge of it, staring into the water. It would be so easy to jump, to "fall" in... he'd done such things before. Thinking he was dead would drive away his new friends. He'd be alone, like he was supposed to be, and they'd be safe from him.

"Grantaire."

He turned around. Joly stood behind him, concern evident in his eyes. Bossuet was a few steps behind him, holding onto his hat as the wind threatened to blow it away.

"Are you alright?" Joly asked.

He shook his head.

"What's wrong?" Bossuet touched his arm. "Anything we can help with?"

Grantaire looked up at them. "Why would you, if you could?" They were good people, fun to be around, but he couldn't imagine why they'd care about him beyond someone to have a good time with. And this was certainly not anyone's definition of a good time.

"Because you are our friend," Joly said. "Come down from there. Let's go get a drink."

Slowly, he obeyed. Joly and Bossuet walked alongside him, speaking softly.

"If you don't wish to speak of it, I understand," said Bossuet. "But if you do, we'll listen. You're a good man, Grantaire."

"We care about you," Joly added.

And for the first time, Grantaire started to believe it.

* * *

**San Francisco, California. January 26, 2009.**

Grantaire woke with a heavy heart and a bruised throat. He laid still, barely breathing, not wanting to be alive. It hadn't worked. He was still cursed, still immortal. He'd revived from death again.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and pushed himself halfway into a sitting position. He was lying in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar hotel room. Across the room sat...Quinn?

He coughed, groaning. Being alive was painful.

"Grantaire!" Quinn exclaimed. They got up and helped him sit up, arranging the pillows on the bed so they supported his back. "You're awake!"

"I'm alive," he mumbled. Gingerly, he touched his neck. For some reason, his bruises weren't healing like his wounds normally did after a fatality. "How... Where... Why..." He had too many questions to ask. The words failed him. He groaned again.

Quinn pulled up a chair and sat at the edge of the bed. "I can't believe you ditched me like that!"

"For your own protection," he said. "Didn't you read the note I left?"

"I did, and it was bullshit," Quinn grumbled.

"Why did you come back?" he asked. "It's not safe to be around me, kid!"

"Um..." said another voice. Grantaire looked up to see Janie, Apollo's new lover, standing awkwardly in the bathroom doorway. "Hi. Um...I'll just...step out for a minute. Sorry."

"Why is  _she_  here?" he demanded of Quinn after she'd walked out into the hallway. "What happened?"

"Let me tell you," Quinn said. " _Without_  interrupting me!"

Grantaire grumbled, but he shut and let them talk.

"I was pissed you left me, but there was no way I was letting you go off on your own," Quinn said. "I knew where you were going, and from everything you'd told me, it wasn't hard to find you. Once you found Apollo, I just followed you to that tree and waited. It seemed to be going surprisingly okay, until he attacked you—that's when I jumped in."

"What happened to Apollo?" Grantaire said. "How did you defeat him? He's a god!"

"I did what you said to," they said smugly. "I talked my way out by preying on his weaknesses. Told him you weren't good enough for his time, that Loki had sent me to make sure he got the right message, that he was needed in Las Vegas. I was scared half to death and only giving partial truths, but those mental blocks you taught me must have worked, 'cuz he left you for dead and went."

"And Janie?"

Quinn shrugged. "After seeing how he treated you, I guess she didn't want to stay with Apollo. She ran away as soon as I jumped in, and I found her hiding in the museum later. I said she could come stay with us if she helped me drag you around and paid for a hotel."

"She saved me," Grantaire said. "You did, too. I owe you one, Quinn."

"Forget it." Quinn smiled. "I told you I wouldn't leave you."

"But you have to!" Grantaire protested. "Don't you see? I came back from the dead again! I'm still cursed! I'm—"

To his surprise, Quinn laughed. "You're no more cursed than me."

"What?" He didn't understand. "But...how?"

"Apollo removed your curse," they said. "You were there! He did it so he could kill you, I bet, but he didn't have the chance because I stopped him. You were just knocked unconscious, that's all."

"It...worked? And I'm still...alive?" Grantaire looked at his now-mortal hands in awe. "I never thought I'd survive if I got this far."

"You're free." Quinn punched him gently. "So don't ever ditch me like that again!"

Grantaire looked at them, a wobbly smile on his face. Then he flung himself onto his friend in a tight embrace.

"Thank you, Quinn," he whispered.

Quinn hugged him back fiercely, then let go. Neither of them had dry eyes, but they both pretended not to notice.

Grantaire took a deep breath. "Damn. Well, I guess I'll have to be careful not to die from now on," he said. "Although I have no idea what to do next. I never thought I'd be this free."

"We can travel some more, just for fun," Quinn suggested. "Make it up as we go along."

"We?" he said, faintly surprised. "You mean you still want to come with me?"

"Of course!" Quinn agreed. "I promised to, and it's not like I have anything better to do. Besides, I like you, Grantaire."

"Thanks, Quinn. I like you, too."

"Let's go to Canada," Quinn said excitedly. "I've never been out of the country before. I can say you're my weird uncle and we'll have the time of our lives." They poked his arm. "Even of yours."

Grantaire sighed and leaned back against the wall. "That's a start. You know, maybe I could find Sam and Dean again. Tell them what happened to me." He doubted they'd care too much, though. "Or not. I think I have enough to work out without getting them involved."

"What about her?" Quinn asked, nodding to the door where Janie had left. "She'll need some readjusting, and you could help."

"Like I don't need readjusting?" he pointed out.

"We all do," they said sagely. "We can all help each other."

"It'll be weird," he said, "but I guess everything in my life has been. If she wants to tag along for a bit, fine."

It was weird, having a future, but he guessed he liked it. Maybe now he could start caring for things like Les Amis had, make a difference. Or he could focus on his own life, now that he had a better chance at a good one. Either way, he thought that even Enjolras would understand.

"Do you feel like you can walk?" Quinn asked.

He nodded. "Yeah. My neck is the only thing that's really hurt."

"Then come on." Quinn offered him a hand to get up. "We've got stuff to do."

* * *

**Paris, France. August 3, 1829.**

Grantaire had heard a lot about Les Amis de l'ABC, but nothing that made him want to come to one of their meetings. Still, he'd lost a bet, and so he allowed Joly and Bossuet to drag him to the Cafe Musain one summer evening for a night of what he assumed would be full of torturous social interaction.

He should have known better than to assume that the friends of his friends would be boring. Grantaire almost found himself having a good time as he was introduced to Combeferre, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, Prouvaire, and Bahorel. For some reason, they seemed to like him, too, despite his apathy toward their political persuasions.

"Where's Enjolras?" wondered Courfeyrac as the night wore on. "He's not usually late to his own meetings."

Grantaire had heard of Enjolras and was fully prepared to dislike him. The most passionate of all of them, he was bound to be irritating, even if the others weren't.

At that moment, a man walked into the room. Everyone called a greeting to him, and Courfeyrac embraced him in welcome. This must be Enjolras.

Grantaire took a drink, then set down his glass. He turned to face the leader, and was surprised at what he found.

Enjolras was blond, very young, and beautiful. He had blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and Grantaire guessed him to be no older than twenty. For a moment, Grantaire thought he saw Apollo come again.

But then he blinked, and the moment was over.

"Who are you?" Enjolras asked.

"This is our friend Grantaire," Bossuet introduced him.

"The skeptic?" Enjolras raised an eyebrow. "Do you come to make sport of our ideals?"

"I came because I lost a bet," he drawled. "But you all interest me. Give me one of your grand speeches that have drawn Joly and Bossuet into your beliefs! Maybe then I'll have something to make sport of."

Enjolras already did not like him. Grantaire, on the other hand, was immediately in love. Why he chose to mock Enjolras, he didn't know; maybe he was simply incapable of expressing any other sentiment.

Much to his dismay, Enjolras took his words seriously and launched into a speech about the Republic, the Revolution, and the glorious future awaiting France and the people of all the world, as Feuilly reminded him.

Still, as the speech progressed, Grantaire found himself hanging on to every word. Enjolras made some good points, but he could think of many counterarguments. Mostly, he was impressed, and even (against his will) a little bit inspired, by Enjolras's unwavering certainty in his cause, the good he believed he could do. Whatever Apollo had said about humanity, he had never believed it like Enjolras did.

A smile crept upon Grantaire's lips as Enjolras concluded his speech. He was angelic, his eyes shining with fervor, and Grantaire felt pulled toward him.

"Well, if you believe that..." he began as soon as Enjolras finished. The look on his face was priceless; Grantaire felt a surge of satisfaction as he dismantled any arguments toward the existence of any human progress. If Joly's grin was anything to go by, this was not a common occurrence in the Musain.

"Grantaire, if change and progression and human quality is all questionable to you, is there anything which you know for a certainty?" Enjolras demanded.

Grantaire leaned back in his chair and smugly proclaimed: "There is but one certainty, my full glass."

The surrounding men burst into laughter, save Enjolras, who rolled his eyes.

Grantaire smiled, his heart warming. Maybe coming to this meeting had not been such a bad idea, after all. It was certainly better than anything else he could think of doing.

Besides, Grantaire was, after a hundred and seventy-one years of life, unalterable. It's not like these young men would change him in any lasting way.

He toasted to nothingness, and took another drink.


End file.
